Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010aas...21544108z&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #215, #441.08; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.401
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
Astronomers have been plagued for centuries by "atmospheric extinction” - scattering and absorption of light as it travels through Earth's night-time atmosphere for the last millisecond of its often billion-year journey. This effect is the principal limiting factor to the precision and accuracy of observations made with terrestrial telescopes. In an effort to significantly enhance the precision of ground-based astronomical observations we have initiated a program to quantitatively measure the atmosphere in the direction a nearby astronomical telescope is pointed, and to do so contemporaneously with its scientific observations.
The first instrument we have fielded to address this problem is the Astronomical Lidar for Extinction (ALE), an eye-safe 527nm lidar that provides high precision extinction measurements when the atmosphere is clear and the majority of astronomical observations are being made. ALE is thus a "clear air lidar” primarily designed to make sub-1% measurements of atmospheric extinction every minute of time, and to make these measurements through an optical path sensibly the same as that through which astronomical observations are being made.
We present results from ALE's newly upgraded detector system. These measurements of atmospheric transmission are applied to simultaneous photometric observations of bright stars to demonstrate LIDAR based extinction correction under a variety of sky conditions.
Development of ALE was funded by NSF Grant 0421087 and AFRL Grant FA9451-08-C-0267.
McGraw John T.
UNM Measurement Astrophysics Group
Zimmer Peter C.
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