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1.
Current projects for large telescopes demand a proper knowledge of atmospheric turbulence to design efficient adaptive optics systems in order to reach large Strehl ratios. However, the proper characterization of the turbulence above a particular site requires long-term monitoring. Because of the lack of long-term information on turbulence, high-altitude winds (in particular winds at the 200 mbar pressure level) were proposed as a parameter for estimating the total turbulence at a particular site, with the advantage of records of winds going back several decades. We present the first complete study of atmospheric adaptive optics parameters above the Teide Observatory (Canary Islands, Spain) in relation to wind speed. On-site measurements of   C 2 N ( h )  profiles (more than 20 200 turbulence profiles) from G-SCIDAR (Generalized Scintillation Detection and Ranging) observations and wind vertical profiles from balloons have been used to calculate the seeing, the isoplanatic angle and the coherence time. The connection of these parameters to wind speeds at ground and at 200 mbar pressure level are shown and discussed. Our results confirm the well-known high quality of the Canary Islands astronomical observatories.  相似文献   

2.
In this work, we use data of nine years (1989 to 1997) at all IRIS sites (Culgoora, Kumbel, Oukaïmeden, Izaña, La Silla and Stanford, devoted to the study of the solar velocity oscillation) to study of diurnal atmospheric extinction coefficient behaviour at Oukaïmeden observatory and to compare it to the others. By this study, we can conclude that the mean extinction coefficient at Oukaimeden is around 0.120 mag airmass-1. Besides, we show that the daily extinction coefficient varies under the influence of the seasonal effect. By the comparison of Oukaïmeden to the other sites, we showed that Oukaïmeden has a good photometric sky quality and constitutes a potential site for astronomical observations in the north hemisphere.  相似文献   

3.
ESO is developing a new generation CCD controller for the Very Large Telescope (VLT) facility on Cerro Paranal. This CCD controller, named FIERA, will also be used at the Cerro La Silla Observatory and in ESO's testing and integration laboratories. A major emphasis in the FIERA design is the ability to run a large number of CCD outputs at fast readout rates, so as to take advantage of the new generation of high speed, low noise amplifiers. The first FIERA prototype was successfully demonstrated in October 1996. The design is undergoing revisions during 1997 and about 20 systems will be produced and deployed through the end of 1998. FIERA will see "first light" at La Silla and Paranal telescopes in early 1998.  相似文献   

4.
An instrument for monitoring of the vertical profile of atmospheric optical turbulence strength, employing the Slope Detection and Ranging (SLODAR) double star technique applied to a small telescope, has been developed by Durham University and the European South Observatory. The system has been deployed at the Cerro Paranal observatory in Chile for statistical characterization of the site. The instrument is configured to sample the turbulence at altitudes below 1.5 km with a vertical resolution of approximately 170 m. The system also functions as a general-purpose seeing monitor, measuring the integrated optical turbulence strength for the whole atmosphere, and hence the seeing width. We give technical details of the prototype and present data to characterize its performance. Comparisons with contemporaneous measurements from a differential image motion monitor (DIMM) and a multi-aperture scintillation sensor (MASS) are discussed. Statistical results for the optical turbulence profile at the Paranal site are presented. We find that, in the median case, 49 per cent of the total optical turbulence strength is associated with the surface layer (below 100 m), 35 per cent with the 'free atmosphere' (above 1500 m) and 16 per cent with the intermediate altitudes (100–1500 m).  相似文献   

5.
The main atmospheric optical parameters have been measured at the Calar Alto Observatory simultaneously using the Generalized Seeing Monitor (GSM) and a Differential Image Motion Monitor (DIMM) during several nights in 2002 May. The temporal evolution of the seeing, the outer scale, the isoplanatic angle and the coherence time have been analysed. There is excellent agreement between the seeing measurements provided by the two instruments, particularly when the turbulence is slow. Indeed, the GSM measurements are corrected from the exposure time when the DIMM data were recorded for at least 5 ms. From almost three years of DIMM (at 5 m height above ground) data, a seeing of 0.92 arcsec with a standard deviation of 0.31 arcsec has been obtained for this site. The outer scale     , the isoplanatic angle  θ0  and the coherence time  τ0  measured with the GSM are well fitted with log-normal distributions with median values of 22.9 m, 2.27 arcsec and 3.7 ms, respectively.  相似文献   

6.
The Antarctic site-testing campaigns have shown that Dome C is an excellent astronomical site on the earth, it is better than any of existing mid-latitude astronomical sites in the world, because of its cold and dry weather, low infrared background radiation, continuously observable time as long as 34 months, clear and highly transparent atmosphere, low wind speed, and the absence of dust and light pollution. And in the international astronomical community it is generally believed that Dome A with a higher altitude may be better than Dome C as a potential excellent astronomical site. In the past 3 years, although held by the Center for Antarctic Astronomy of Chinese Academy of Sciences, the site testing at Dome A has preliminarily con?rmed the many advantages of Dome A as an excellent astronomical site, but the data about the atmospheric seeing, which is an important parameter for assessing the site quality for optical observations, have not been obtained until now. Hence, on the basis of a commercial telescope with the diameter of 35 cm, we have made the hardware reformation and software development to have it operate as a DIMM (Differential Image Motion Monitor), which can simultaneously monitor both the seeing and isoplanatic angle at Dome A automatically. At present this instrument has been shipped to Antarctica by the “Xuelong” exploration ship, and will be installed at Dome A, and begin to work in early 2011. Before the shipment, by through the comparative measurements together with an existing seeing monitor at the Xinglong astronomical station, the software, hardware, as well as the installation and adjustment of the instrument, are further veri?ed by testing.  相似文献   

7.
ESO intends to actively and vigorously support the search for extrasolar planets by designing and commissioning instruments and methods targeted towards this end. High precision radial velocity measurements at La Silla and Paranal, wide-field microlensing imaging in the bulge from Paranal, and very high spatial resolution observations with the VLT Interferometer are but a few of the exciting new techniques ESO plans to bring on line in the next few years. I will discuss in detail the expected or actual performance of each of these methods and review the scientific potential for progress in the field of extrasolar planet research that they are expected to bring.  相似文献   

8.
We present results from a study of the seeing quality at the 4.2-m William Herschel telescope at La Palma. The median intrinsic seeing at the site is found to be excellent, and is comparable to that at the Paranal and Mauna Kea observatories. Contributions to the seeing from turbulence within the telescope dome are insignificant. Furthermore, the optical quality and tracking stability of the telescope are good, so that long-exposure image widths close to the limit imposed by the site seeing can be expected.  相似文献   

9.
Seykora  E. J. 《Solar physics》1997,176(1):37-44
Solar scintillations were investigated as a method of detecting seeing-dependent wavefront curvature variations for solar adaptive optics. The method is applicable to full-disk averaged, adaptive corrections of large-scale near-field seeing distortions. As a test case, seeing measurements were carried out on a single small adaptive mirror, representing one element of what would be a large multielement adaptive array. All observations showed a greater than 5× reduction of seeing distortions as a result of this wavefront correction.  相似文献   

10.
During the forthcoming years, ESO will implement a large number of CCDs in optical instruments for the Paranal and La Silla observatories. An important step in this process is the CCD characterization and optimization that is done after the device is received from the manufacturer. In order to accommodate the new large CCDs and to interface to the new FIERA controller, ESO is building a new CCD testing facility in Garching. Among the measurements that will be made with this new facility are: quantum efficiency, conversion factor, charge transfer efficiency, dark current, read out noise and cosmetic quality.  相似文献   

11.
In 1964, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) came into being as a response to the need of European astronomers for access to large telescopes in good observing conditions. The original plan called for a 3.6 m telescope in addition to a number of smaller instruments. The 3.6 m telescope took some 12 years to build, while ESO headquarters moved from Hamburg to CERN to Garching near Munich, and during the times of office of three Directors General, and it was built on La Silla in Chile, where superior sites had been found. After 1982, when Italy and Switzerland joined the original six member countries, ESO was able to expand by building the 3.5 m New Technology Telescope, and ultimately planning and constructing the VLT on Paranal. At present ESO is a stable organization that has been successful in its original aims, and in view of new plans can look forward in confidence.  相似文献   

12.
After summarizing the UV capabilities available at the Paranal observatory, the perspectives for additional UV instruments are discussed. When considering that most likely the E-ELT will not be optimized for UV, and that HST operations will be soon discontinued, UV instruments at the VLT may represent the best capabilities for the ESO community for a few years. In particular the cases of spectroscopy close to the atmospheric cutoff and Blue diffraction limited imaging show a great scientific potential.  相似文献   

13.
BAT99-129 is a rare, short-period eclipsing Wolf-Rayet binary in the Large Magellanic Cloud. We present here medium-resolution NTT/EMMI spectra that allow us to disentangle the spectra of the two components and find the orbital parameters of the binary. We also present VLT/FORS1 spectra of this binary taken during the secondary eclipse, i.e. when the companion star passes in front of the Wolf-Rayet star. With these data we are able to extract, for the first time in absolute units for a WR + O binary, the sizes of the line emitting regions.Based on observations obtained at the La Silla and Paranal Observatories, European Southern Observatory (Chile).  相似文献   

14.
We present the results of our 2005–2007 campaign to measure the vertical distribution of optical turbulence above Mount Maidanak. The measurements were performed with the MASS instrument, a multi-aperture scintillation sensor that has been widely used for such studies in recent years at many observatories worldwide. Analysis of the data shows that the median seeing in the free atmosphere (at an altitude of 0.5 km and higher) is 0 ″46, while the isoplanatic angle is 2″.47. Given the large time constant (about 7 ms at good seeing), such conditions are favorable for using adaptive optics and interferometric measurements in the visible and near-infrared spectral ranges.  相似文献   

15.
The future establishment of large telescopes at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos (ORM) has raised the necessity of designing a site-testing campaign, aimed specifically at selecting their emplacements, as well as characterizing correctly the local seeing behaviour and the fluctuations of the turbulent field in the area covered by the observatory.This paper describes the site evaluation programme to be carried out at the ORM during the next four years. The data obtained in this program will improve earlier tests in the critical areas of sub-are sec seeing, the size of the isoplanatic patch, the efecto Caldera and suitability for infrared astronomy, among others.Paper presented at the 11th European Regional Astronomical Meetings of the IAU on New Windows to the Universe, held 3–8 July, 1989, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain.  相似文献   

16.
This paper develops a compensation algorithm based on Linear–Quadratic–Gaussian (LQG) control system design whose parameters are determined (in part) by a model of the atmosphere. The model for the atmosphere is based on the open-loop statistics of the atmosphere as observed by the wavefront sensor, and is identified from these using an auto-regressive, moving average (ARMA) model. The (LQG) control design is compared with an existing compensation algorithm for a simulation developed at ESO that represents the operation of MACAO adaptive optics system on the 8.2 m telescopes at Paranal, Chile. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.  相似文献   

17.
The new extremely large telescope projects need accurate evaluation of the candidate sites. In this paper, we present the astroclimatological comparison between the Paranal Observatory, located on the coast of the Atacama Desert (Chile), and the Observatorio del Roque de Los Muchachos (ORM), located in La Palma (Canary Islands). We apply a statistical analysis using long-term data bases from Paranal and Carlsberg Automatic Meridian Circle (CAMC) weather stations. The monthly, seasonal and annual averages of the main synoptical parameters in the two sites are computed. We compare the long-term trends in order to understand the main differences between the two sites. Significant differences between the two analysed sites have been found. Temperature has increasing trends in both observatories with somewhat higher evidence at the ORM. Seasonal variations of pressure at Paranal have been highly decreasing since 1989, and we do not see the same phenomenon at the ORM. The two sites are dominated by high pressure. In cold seasons, relative humidity (RH) is lower than 60 per cent at CAMC and 15 per cent at Paranal. In warm seasons, RH is lower than 40 per cent at CAMC and 20 per cent at Paranal. The analysis of the dew point has shown better conditions at Paranal with respect to CAMC in winter, autumn and spring before 2001, while the two sites are becoming similar afterwards. Winds at the ORM are subject to pronounced local variations.  相似文献   

18.
Molodij  G.  Roddier  F.  Kupke  R.  Mickey  D.L. 《Solar physics》2002,206(1):189-207
Active or adaptive optics often require the ability to characterize wavefront aberrations using natural extended sources. The task becomes especially challenging when dealing with widely extended sources such as the solar granulation. We propose a new approach based on the processing of oppositely defocused images. This method, which is a generalization of a technique known as curvature sensing, derives the wavefront curvature from the difference between two oppositely defocused images and determines the second momenta of the point spread function. The proposed method measures the wavefront aberration from the images themselves, requires little computational resources, is fast enough to be used in a real-time adaptive optics system and is particularly adapted to random patterns such as solar granulation or spot penumbras whose morphology evolves during the observation. We envision the application of the method to real-time seeing compensation in solar astronomical telescopes, and to the correction of optical system aberrations in remote sensing instrumentation. This effort is directed towards building a curvature sensor for the real-time applications.  相似文献   

19.
Multi-channel CCD read-out, which is an option offered at most optical observatories, can significantly reduce the time spent on reading the detector. The penalty of using this option is the so-called amplifier cross-talk, which causes contamination across the output amplifiers, typically at the level of 1:10 000.This can be a serious problem for applications where high precision and/or high contrast is of importance. We represent an analysis of amplifier cross-talk for two instruments – FORS1 at the ESO VLT telescope Antu (Paranal) and DFOSC at the Danish 1.54 m telescope (La Silla) – and present a post-processing method for removing the imprint of cross-talk. It is found that cross-talk may significantly contaminate high-precision photometry in crowded fields, but it can be effectively eliminated during data reduction. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.  相似文献   

20.
Adaptive optics (AO), which provides diffraction limited imaging over a field-of-view (FOV), is a powerful technique for solar observation. In the tomographic approach, each wavefront sensor (WFS) is looking at a single reference that acts as a guide star. This allows a 3D reconstruction of the distorted wavefront to be made. The correction is applied by one or more deformable mirrors (DMs). This technique benefits from information about atmospheric turbulence at different layers, which can be used to reconstruct the wavefront extremely well. With the assistance of the MAOS software package, we consider the tomography errors and WFS aliasing errors, and focus on how the performance of a solar telescope (pointing toward zenith) is related to atmospheric anisoplanatism. We theoretically quantify the performance of the to- mographic solar AO system. The results indicate that the tomographic AO system can improve the average Strehl ratio of a solar telescope in a 10" - 80" diameter FOV by only employing one DM conjugated to the telescope pupil. Furthermore, we discuss the effects of DM conjugate altitude on the correction achievable by the AO system by selecting two atmospheric models that differ mainly in terms of atmospheric prop- erties at ground level, and present the optimum DM conjugate altitudes for different observation sites.  相似文献   

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