Measurements of atmospheric turbulence parameters at Vainu Bappu Observatory using short-exposure CCD images [IMA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1901.02187


We report the atmospheric turbulence parameters namely, atmospheric seeing, the tilt-anisoplanatic angle ($\theta_0$) and the coherence time ($\tau_0$), measured under various sky conditions, at Vainu Bappu Observatory in Kavalur. Bursts of short exposure images of selected stars were recorded with a high-speed, frame-transfer CCD mounted on the Cassegrain focus of a newly commissioned 1.3 m telescope. The estimated median seeing is $ \approx 1.85^{\prime\prime} $ at wavelength of $\sim 600$ nm, the image motion correlation between different pairs of stars is $\sim 44\%$ for $\theta_0 \approx 36^{\prime\prime}$ and mean $\tau_0$ is $\approx 2.4$ ms. This work was motivated by the design considerations and expected the performance of an adaptive optics system that is currently being planned for the telescope.

Read this paper on arXiv…

S. V, R. Banyal, S. R, et. al.
Wed, 9 Jan 19
40/46

Comments: N/A