Related papers: Monitoring the atmospheric throughput at Cerro Tol…
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.…
The optical turbulence conditions as measured between 2004 until end of 2008 above Cerro Tololo, their seasonal as well as nocturnal behavior are presented. A comparison with the MASS-DIMM system of the Thirty Meter Telescope site testing…
Motivated by the recognition that variation in the optical transmission of the atmosphere is probably the main limitation to the precision of ground-based CCD measurements of celestial fluxes, we review the physical processes that attenuate…
The calibration hardware system of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is designed to measure two quantities: a telescope's instrumental response and atmospheric transmission, both as a function of wavelength. First of all, a…
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…
We have developed a near-infrared camera called ANIR (Atacama Near-InfraRed camera) for the University of Tokyo Atacama Observatory 1.0m telescope (miniTAO) installed at the summit of Cerro Chajnantor (5640 m above sea level) in northern…
The ALMA observatory is now putting more focus on high-frequency observations (frequencies from 275-950 GHz). However, high-frequency observations often suffer from rapid variations in atmospheric opacity that directly affect the system…
Ground-based astronomy has to correct astronomical observations from the impact of the atmospheric transparency and its variability.The current objective of several observatories is to achieve a sub-percent level monitoring of atmospheric…
At frequencies below 1 Hz, fluctuations in atmospheric emission in the Chajnantor region in northern Chile are the primary source of interference for bolometric millimeter-wave observations. This paper focuses on characterizing these…
Transmission spectroscopy serves as a valuable tool for probing atmospheric absorption features in the terminator regions of exoplanets. Stellar surface heterogeneity can introduce wavelength-dependent contamination that complicates the…
Accurate characterization of atmospheric optical turbulence is essential for evaluating astronomical sites and optimizing adaptive optics systems. The Multistar Turbulence Monitor (MTM) infers the vertical distribution of the…
Observations at (sub-)millimeter wavelengths offer a complementary perspective on our Sun and other stars, offering significant insights into both the thermal and magnetic composition of their chromospheres. Despite the fundamental progress…
A FRAM (F/(Ph)otometric Robotic Atmospheric Monitor) telescope is a system of a robotic mount, a large-format CCD camera and a fast telephoto lens that can be used for atmospheric monitoring at any site when information about the…
Many atmospheric and climatic criteria have to be taken into account for the selection of a suitable site for the next generation of imaging air-shower Cherenkov telescopes, the "Cherenkov Telescope Array" CTA. Such data are not available…
The Millimeter Sky Transparency Imager (MiSTI) is a small millimeter-wave scanning telescope with a 25-cm diameter dish operating at 183 GHz. MiSTI is installed at Atacama, Chile, and it measures emission from atmospheric water vapor and…
The site selection group for the future Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) has deployed sensitive light sensors at 9 candidate sites, 5 of them in the Southern and 4 in the Northern hemisphere. The sensors are equipped with a PIN diode and a…
An all-sky cloud monitoring system that generates relative opacity maps over many of the world's premier astronomical observatories is described. Photometric measurements of numerous background stars are combined with simultaneous sky…
Atmospheric water vapor is the main limiting factor of atmospheric transparency in the mm and submm wavelength spectral windows. Thus, dry sites are needed for the installation and successful operation of radio astronomy observatories…
The Earth's atmosphere affects ground-based astronomical observations. Scattering, absorption, and radiation processes deteriorate the signal-to-noise ratio of the data received. For scheduling astronomical observations it is, therefore,…
The study of transient and variable events, including novae, active galactic nuclei, and black hole binaries, has historically been a fruitful path for elucidating the evolutionary mechanisms of our universe. The study of such events in the…