Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010aas...21544204m&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #215, #442.04; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.406
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
The NRAO Green Bank Telescope routinely observes at wavelengths from 3 mm to 1 m. As with all mm-wave telescopes, observing conditions depend upon the variable atmospheric water content. The site provides over 100 days/yr when opacities are low enough for good observing at 3 mm, but winds on the open-air structure reduce the time suitable for 3-mm observing where pointing is critical. Thus, to maximum productivity the observing wavelength needs to match weather conditions. For 6 years the telescope has used a dynamic scheduling system (recently upgraded; www.gb.nrao.edu/DSS) that requires accurate multi-day forecasts for winds and opacities. Since opacity forecasts are not provided by the National Weather Services (NWS), I have developed an automated system that takes available forecasts, derives forecasted opacities, and deploys the results on the web in user-friendly graphical overviews (www.gb.nrao.edu/ rmaddale/Weather).
The system relies on the "North American Mesoscale" models, which are updated by the NWS every 6 hrs, have a 12 km horizontal resolution, 1 hr temporal resolution, run to 84 hrs, and have 60 vertical layers that extend to 20 km. Each forecast consists of a time series of ground conditions, cloud coverage, etc, and, most importantly, temperature, pressure, humidity as a function of height. I use the Liebe's MWP model (Radio Science, 20, 1069, 1985) to determine the absorption in each layer for each hour for 30 observing wavelengths. Radiative transfer provides, for each hour and wavelength, the total opacity and the radio brightness of the atmosphere, which contributes substantially at some wavelengths to Tsys and the observational noise.
Comparisons of measured and forecasted Tsys at 22.2 and 44 GHz imply that the forecasted opacities are good to about 0.01 Nepers, which is sufficient for forecasting and accurate calibration. Reliability is high out to 2 days and degrades slowly for longer-range forecasts.
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