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We analyze some restrictions found in the estimation process, which are general to any measurement technique. The insensitivity of the instrument to large values of outer scale is one of them, as the telescope becomes blind to outer scales larger than its diameter. Another problem is the contradiction between the length of data and the stationarity assumption of the turbulence (turbulence parameters may change during the data acquisition time).
Our method effectively deals with problems such as noise estimation, asymmetric correlation functions and wavefront propagation effects. It is shown that the latter cannot be neglected in high resolution AO systems or strong turbulence at high altitudes. The method is applied to the Gemini South MCAO system (GeMS) that comprises five wavefront sensors and two DMs. Statistical values of L0(h) at Cerro Pachón from data acquired with GeMS during three years are shown, where some interesting resemblance to other independent results in the literature are shown.
Stereo-SCIDAR is a generalised SCIDAR instrument which is used to characterise the profile of the atmospheric optical turbulence strength and wind velocity using triangulation between two optical binary stars. Stereo-SCIDAR has demonstrated the capability to resolve turbulent layers with the required vertical resolution to support wide-field ELT instrument designs. These high resolution atmospheric parameters are critical for design studies and statistical evaluation of on-sky performance under real conditions. Here we report on the new Stereo-SCIDAR instrument installed on one of the Auxillary Telescope ports of the Very Large Telescope array at Cerro Paranal. Paranal is located approximately 20 km from Cerro Armazones, the site of the E-ELT. Although the surface layer of the turbulence will be different for the two sites due to local geography, the high-altitude resolution profiles of the free atmosphere from this instrument will be the most accurate available for the E-ELT site.
In addition, these unbiased and independent profiles are also used to further characterise the site of the VLT. This enables instrument performance calibration, optimisation and data analysis of, for example, the ESO Adaptive Optics facility and the Next Generation Transit Survey. It will also be used to validate atmospheric models for turbulence forecasting. We show early results from the commissioning and address future implications of the results.
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