Related papers: Thirty Meter Telescope Site Testing VI: Turbulence…
We present results from the first year of a campaign to characterize and monitor the optical turbulence profile at the SAAO Sutherland observing station in South Africa. A MASS-DIMM (MultiAperture Scintillation Sensor - Differential Image…
The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) and the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) site testing teams have recently finalized their site testing studies. Since atmospheric water vapor is the dominant source of absorption and increased…
The results of the Tenerife Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) experiments are presented. These observations cover 5000 and 6500 square degrees on the sky at 10 and 15 GHz respectively centred around Dec.~ +35 degrees. The experiments are…
It has already been demonstrated that a mesoscale meteorological model such as Meso-NH is highly reliable in reproducing 3D maps of optical turbulence. Preliminary measurements above the Antarctic Plateau have so far indicated a pretty good…
The low infrared background and high atmospheric transparency are the principal advantages of Antarctic Plateau sites for astronomy. However, the poor seeing (between one and three arcseconds) negates much of the sensitivity improvements…
We present the results of the atmospheric optical turbulence (OT) measurements performed atop Mt. Shatdzhatmaz at the installation site of new 2.5-m telescope of Sternberg Astronomical Institute. Nearly 300 000 vertical OT profiles from the…
We discuss several improvements in the detection of atmospheric turbulence using SLOpe Detection And Ranging (SLODAR). Frequently, SLODAR observations have shown strong ground-layer turbulence, which is beneficial to adaptive optics. We…
Mesoscale model such as Meso-Nh have proven to be highly reliable in reproducing 3D maps of optical turbulence (see Refs. 1, 2, 3, 4) above mid-latitude astronomical sites. These last years ground-based astronomy has been looking towards…
Results from the third campaign of a ground-based multi-band observation of the millimeter emission of the sky from Tenerife (Canary Islands) are presented. The instrument consists of a 0.45 meter diameter off-axis telescope equipped with a…
The mesoscale model Meso-NH is used to simulate the optical turbulence at Mt Graham (Arizona, USA), site of the Large Binocular Telescope. Measurements of the CN2-profiles obtained with a generalized scidar from 41 nights are used to…
One of the main goals of the feasibility study MOSE (MOdellig ESO Sites) is to evaluate the performances of a method conceived to forecast the optical turbulence above the ESO sites of the Very Large Telescope and the European-Extremely…
The VST (VLT Survey Telescope) is a 2.6 m class Alt-Az telescope to be installed on Cerro Paranal in the Atacama desert, Northern Chile, in the European Southern Observatory (ESO) site. The VST is a wide-field imaging facility planned to…
From the South Pole, microthermal turbulence within a narrow surface boundary layer some 200m thick provides the dominant contribution to the astronomical seeing. We present results for the seeing at a wavelength of 2.4um. The narrow…
We present the first results of the site testing performed at Mt.~Shatdzhatmaz at Northern Caucasus, where the new Sternberg astronomical institute 2.5-m telescope will be installed. An automatic site monitor instrumentation and…
The performance of tomographic adaptive optics systems is intrinsically linked to the vertical profile of optical turbulence. Firstly, a sufficient number of discrete turbulent layers must be reconstructed to model the true continuous…
The Simons Observatory (SO) is a cosmic microwave background (CMB) survey experiment located in the Atacama Desert in Chile at an elevation of 5200 meters, nominally consisting of an array of three 0.42-meter small aperture telescopes…
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the next generation of ground-based gamma-ray observatory. The observatory will consist of two arrays, one located in the southern hemisphere (Paranal,Chile) and the other in the northern hemisphere…
The Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) is developing a Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) system for the Kodaikanal Tower Telescope (KTT). In this context, we have measured the daytime turbulence strength profile at the Kodaikanal…
We report results of a two-year campaign of measurements, during arctic winter darkness, of optical turbulence in the atmospheric boundary-layer above the Polar Environment Atmospheric Laboratory in northern Ellesmere Island (latitude +80…
These last years ground-based astronomy has been looking towards Antarctica, especially its summits and the internal continental plateau where the optical turbulence (OT) appears to be confined in a shallow layer close to the surface.…