Related papers: Optical turbulence profiling with Stereo-SCIDAR fo…
Monitoring turbulence parameters is crucial in high-angular resolution astronomy for various purposes, such as optimising adaptive optics systems or fringe trackers. The former are present at most modern observatories and will remain…
Results of 2005-2007 campaign of measurement of the optical turbulence vertical distribution above Mt. Maidanak are presented. Measurements are performed with the MASS (Multi-Aperture Scintillation Sensor) device which is widely used in…
The efficiency of the management of top-class ground-based astronomical facilities supported by Adaptive Optics (AO) relies on our ability to forecast the optical turbulence (OT) and a set of relevant atmospheric parameters. Indeed, in…
Climate change is affecting and will increasingly affect astronomical observations. In this paper, we investigated the role some key weather parameters play in the quality of astronomical observations, and analysed their long-term trends…
High precision fast photometry from ground-based observatories is a challenge due to intensity fluctuations (scintillation) produced by the Earth's atmosphere. Here we describe a method to reduce the effects of scintillation by a…
Advanced adaptive optics (AO) instruments on ground-based telescopes require accurate knowledge of the atmospheric turbulence strength as a function of altitude. This information assists point spread function reconstruction, AO temporal…
Optical turbulence, driven by fluctuations of the atmospheric refractive index, poses a significant challenge to ground-based optical systems, as it distorts the propagation of light. This degradation affects both astronomical observations…
Adaptive optics (AO) is a technology in modern ground-based optical telescopes to compensate the wavefront distortions caused by atmospheric turbulence. One method that allows to retrieve information about the atmosphere from telescope data…
Observations of circumstellar environments to look for the direct signal of exoplanets and the scattered light from disks has significant instrumental implications. In the past 15 years, major developments in adaptive optics, coronagraphy,…
A Low Humidity and Temperature Profiling (LHATPRO) microwave radiometer, manufactured by Radiometer Physics GmbH (RPG), is used to monitor sky conditions over ESO's Paranal observatory in support of VLT science operations. The unit measures…
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…
The simulation of the optical turbulence (OT) for astronomical applications obtained with non-hydrostatic atmospherical models at meso-scale presents, with respect to measurements, some advantages. The future of the ground-based astronomy…
This article is the second of a series of articles aiming at proving the feasibility of the forecast of all the most relevant classical atmospherical parameters for astronomical applications (wind speed and direction, temperature, relative…
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…
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 optical turbulence (OT) monitoring is crucial for site characterisation at astronomical observatories and optical communications ground stations. The Shack-Hartmann Image Motion Monitor (SHIMM) instrument implements a fast,…
Context. The advent of the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) will increase the collecting area by more than an order of magnitude compared to the individual Unit Telescopes of the Very Large Telescope (VLT). Fainter spectrophotometric…
Characterisation of atmospheric optical turbulence is crucial for the design and operation of modern ground-based optical telescopes. In particular, the effective application of adaptive optics correction on large and extremely large…
Atmospheric scintillation caused by optical turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere can be the dominant source of noise in ground-based photometric observations of bright targets, which is a particular concern for ground-based exoplanet…
The forecast on a time scale of 1 or 2 hours is crucial for all kind of new generation facilities (ELTs) instrumentation supported by the adaptive optics that will be mainly operated in Service Mode. In a recent study (Masciadri et al.…