Related papers: A different glance to the site testing above Dome …
The internal antarctic plateau revealed in the last years to be a site with interesting potentialities for the astronomical applications due to the extreme dryness and low temperatures, the typical high altitude of the plateau, the weak…
Preliminary site testing at Dome C (Antarctica) is presented, using both Automatic Weather Station (AWS) meteorological data (1986-1993) and Precipitable Water Vapor (PWV) measurements made by the authors. A comparison with South Pole and…
Over the past few years a major effort has been put into the exploration of potential sites for the deployment of submillimetre astronomical facilities. Amongst the most important sites are Dome C and Dome A on the Antarctic Plateau, and…
Seeing, the angular size of stellar images blurred by atmospheric turbulence, is a critical parameter used to assess the quality of astronomical sites. Median values at the best mid-latitude sites are generally in the range of…
Dome A in Antarctica has been demonstrated to be the best site on earth for optical, infrared, and terahertz astronomical observations by more and more evidence, such as excellent free-atmosphere seeing, extremely low perceptible water…
The Antarctic plateau contains the best sites on earth for many forms of astronomy, but none of the existing bases was selected with astronomy as the primary motivation. In this article, we try to systematically compare the merits of…
Atmospherical mesoscale models can offer unique potentialities to characterize and discriminate potential astronomical sites. Our team has recently completely validated the Meso-Nh model above Dome C (Lascaux et al. 2009, 2010). Using all…
Preliminary site testing datasets suggest that Dome C in Antarctica is one of the best sites on Earth for astronomical observations in the 200 to 500 micron regime, i.e. for far-infrared (FIR) and submillimetre (submm) astronomy. We present…
In two recent papers the mesoscale model Meso-NH, joint with the Astro-Meso-NH package, has been validated at Dome C, Antarctica, for the characterization of the optical turbulence. It has been shown that the meteorological parameters…
This paper analyses 3.5 years of site testing data obtained at Dome C, Antarctica, based on measurements obtained with three DIMMs located at three different elevations. Basic statistics of the seeing and the isoplanatic angle are given, as…
The atmospheric properties above three sites (Dome C, Dome A and the South Pole) on the Internal Antarctic Plateau are investigated for astronomical applications using the monthly median of the analyses from ECMWF (the European Centre for…
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.…
We present long term site testing statistics obtained at Dome C, Antarctica with various experiments deployed within the Astroconcordia programme since 2003. We give values of integrated turbulence parameters in the visible at ground level…
Antarctica provides a unique environment for astronomy. The cold, dry and stable air found above the high plateau, as well as the pure ice below, offers new opportunities across the photon & particle spectrum. The summits of the plateau…
Antarctica offers unique conditions for ground-based observations, such as low sky background in the infrared, improved seeing, and low turbulence and scintillation noise. These properties are particularly beneficial to imaging, precision…
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…
Recent site testing (see: http://www-luan.unice.fr/Concordiastro/indexantartic.html) has shown that Dome C in Antarctica might have a high potential for stellar interferometry if some solutions related to the surface atmospheric layer are…
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…
PILOT (the Pathfinder for an International Large Optical Telescope) is a proposed 2.5 m optical/infrared telescope to be located at Dome C on the Antarctic plateau. Conditions at Dome C are known to be exceptional for astronomy. The seeing…
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…