Atmospheric turbulence measurements at Ali Observatory, Tibet

Liyong Liu; Yongqiang Yao; Jean Vernin; Merieme Chadid; Yiping Wang; Hongshuai Wang; Jia Yin; Christophe Giordano; Xuan Qian

doi:10.1117/12.926157

17 September 2012 Atmospheric turbulence measurements at Ali Observatory, Tibet

Liyong Liu, Yongqiang Yao, Jean Vernin, Merieme Chadid, Yiping Wang, Hongshuai Wang, Jia Yin, Christophe Giordano, Xuan Qian

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 8444, Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes IV; 844464 (2012) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.926157
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2012, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Abstract

The atmospheric turbulence characteristics are important to evaluate the quality of ground-based astronomical observatory. In order to characterize Ali observatory, Tibet. we have developed a single star Scidar (SSS) system, which is able to continuously monitor the vertical profiles of both optical turbulence and wind speed. The main SSS configuration includes a 40cm telescope and a CCD camera for fast sampling the star scintillation pattern. The SSS technique analyzes the scintillation patterns in real time, by computing the spatial auto-correlation and at least two cross-correlation images, and retrieves both C² _n (h) and V (h) vertical profiles from the ground up to 30km. This paper presents the first turbulence measurements with SSS at Ali observatory in October, 2011. We have successfully obtained the profiles of optical turbulence and wind speed, as well as the key parameters for adaptive optics, such as seeing, coherence time, and isoplanatic angle. The favourable results indicate that Ali observatory can be an excellent astronomical observatory.

Citation Download Citation

Liyong Liu, Yongqiang Yao, Jean Vernin, Merieme Chadid, Yiping Wang, Hongshuai Wang, Jia Yin, Christophe Giordano, and Xuan Qian "Atmospheric turbulence measurements at Ali Observatory, Tibet", Proc. SPIE 8444, Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes IV, 844464 (17 September 2012); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.926157

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