Related papers: Measuring Local Turbulence Along the Optical Path:…
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…
The image quality budget of many telescopes can have substantial contributions from local seeing, both``mirror'' and ``dome'', which arise from turbulence and temperature variations that are difficult to quantify, measure directly, and…
Atmospheric optical turbulence seriously limits the performance of high angular resolution instruments. An 8-night campaign of measurements was carried out at the LAMOST site in 2011, to characterize the optical turbulence. Two instruments…
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…
Real-time seeing and outer scale estimation at the location of the focus of a telescope is fundamental for the adaptive optics systems dimensioning and performance prediction, as well as for the operational aspects of instruments. This…
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…
The Transient Optical Sky Survey (TOSS) is an automated, ground-based telescope system dedicated to searching for optical transient events. Small telescope tubes are mounted on a tracking, semi-equatorial frame with a single polar axis.…
Astronomical seeing is quantified by a single parameter, turbulence integral, in the framework of the Kolmogorov turbulence model. This parameter can be routinely measured by a Differential Image Motion Monitor, DIMM. A new instrument,…
A defocused image of a bright single star in a small telescope contains rich information on the optical turbulence, i.e. the seeing. The concept of a novel turbulence monitor based on recording sequences of ring-like intrafocal images and…
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…
Atmospheric turbulence has a degrading effect on the image quality of long-range observation systems. As a result of various elements such as temperature, wind velocity, humidity, etc., turbulence is characterized by random fluctuations in…
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…
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…
Atmospheric turbulence characterization is crucial for technologies like free-space optical communications. Existing methods using a spatially-integrated one-dimensional (1D) orbital angular momentum (OAM) spectrum, P(m), obscure the…
Strong turbulence conditions create amplitude aberrations through the effects of near-field diffraction. When integrated over long optical path lengths, amplitude aberrations (seen as scintillation) can nullify local areas in the recorded…
In this contribution we evaluate the impact of filtering techniques in enhancing the accuracy of forecasts of optical turbulence and atmospheric parameters critical for ground-based telescopes. These techniques make use of the data…
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 weak-lensing science of the LSST project drives the need to carefully model and separate the instrumental artifacts from the intrinsic lensing signal. The dominant source of the systematics for all ground based telescopes is the spatial…
Conventional ground-based astronomical observations suffer from image distortion due to atmospheric turbulence. This can be minimized by choosing suitable geographic locations or adaptive optical techniques, and avoided altogether by using…
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…