Related papers: Accurate seeing measurements with MASS and DIMM
The Diffuse Microwave Emission Survey (DIMES) has been selected for a mission concept study for NASA's New Mission Concepts for Astrophysics program. DIMES will measure the frequency spectrum of the cosmic microwave background and diffuse…
Astrometric measurements of microlensing events can in principle determine both the "parallax" \tilde r_E and the "proper motion" \mu of an individual event which (combined with the Einstein time scale t_E) in turn yield the mass, distance,…
Traditional color and airmass corrections can typically achieve ~0.02 mag precision in photometric observing conditions. A major limiting factor is the variability in atmospheric throughput, which changes on timescales of less than a night.…
We present comprehensive seeing statistics for the San Pedro M\'artir site derived from the Thirty Meter Telescope site selection data. The observations were obtained between 2004 and 2008 with a Differential Image Motion Monitor (DIMM) and…
We present low-resolution turbulence profiles of the atmosphere above Dome C, Antarctica, measured with the MASS instrument during 25 nights in March-May 2004. Except for the lowest layer, Dome C has significantly less turbulence than Cerro…
Image degradation impedes our ability to extract information from astronomical observations. One factor contributing to this degradation is ``dome seeing", the reduction in image quality due to variations in the index of refraction within…
Following previous suggestions of other researchers, this paper discusses the prospects for astrometric observation of MACHO gravitational microlensing events. We derive the expected astrometric observables for a simple microlensing event…
The strength and vertical distribution of atmospheric turbulence is a key factor determining the performance of optical and infrared telescopes, with and without adaptive optics. Yet, this remains challenging to measure. We describe a new…
Atmospheric turbulence is the one of the major limiting factors for ground-based astronomical observations. In this paper, the problem of short-term forecasting seeing is discussed. The real data that were obtained by atmospheric optical…
Atmospheric seeing is one of the most important parameters for evaluating and monitoring an astronomical site. Moreover, being able to predict the seeing in advance can guide observing decisions and significantly improve the efficiency of…
Whole atmosphere seeing \beta_0 is the most important parameter in site testing measurements. Estimation of the seeing from a variance of differential image motion is always biased by a non-zero DIMM exposure, which results in a wind…
We present measurements of optical turbulence (OT) power inside the telescope dome using an instrument registering fluctuations of intensity of a bright star at a plane conjugated to -2 km below the pupil of the telescope - Domecam. The…
Reliable and exact assessment of visibility is essential for safe air traffic. In order to overcome the drawbacks of the currently subjective reports from human observers, we present an approach to automatically derive visibility measures…
We report what is believed to be the first example of fully continuous, 24-hour vertical monitoring of atmospheric optical turbulence. This is achieved using a novel instrument, the 24-hour Shack-Hartmann Image Motion Monitor (24hSHIMM).…
Astronomical seeing measurements were carried out at Maidanak observatory during the period from August to November 2018 using DIMM (Differential Image Motion Monitor). The median value of seeing for the entire period was determined as 0.54…
Dome seeing is a known source of image quality degradation, but despite tremendous progress in wavefront control with the development of adaptive optics and environmental control through implementation of dome venting, surprisingly little…
An Atmospheric Monitoring System (AMS) is a mandatory and key device of a space-based mission which aims to detect Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECR) and Extremely-High Energy Cosmic Rays (EHECR) from Space. JEM-EUSO has a dedicated…
We characterize the ability of the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) to perform relative astrometry across its 500~Mpix, 3 deg^2 science field of view, and across 4 years of operation. This is done using internal comparisons of ~4x10^7…
The approximate nature of the adaptive-optics time constant measurements with MASS is examined. The calibration coefficient C derived from numerical simulations of polychromatic scintillation shows dependence on the height of the turbulence…
Over the past decade, microlensing has developed into a powerful tool to study stellar astrophysics, especially stellar atmospheres, stellar masses, and binarity. I review this progress. Stellar atmospheres can be probed whenever the source…