A Coordinated Campaign to Characterize the Atmosphere for LSST Science
Abstract
Cerro Pachon, Chile is the site of the 8m Gemini South and 4.2m SOAR telescopes along with associated MASS and DIMM instruments. During a 4 night, 9-12 May 2005, observing campaign we obtained a coordinated simultaneous data set from the suite of facilities on Cerro Pachon as well as radar wind data in order to explore the fundamental limits on LSST science due to the atmosphere. We describe the instrument suite, our observational strategy used over our 4 night campaign, the data obtained, and its time sequencing. The campaign strategy was to use the SOAR and Gemini telescopes to obtain simultaneous sequences of 15 second r-band images in close proximity to the MASS/DIMM reference star at the same time. We have used these data as well as observations from the Subaru telescope to examine the relation between atmospheric turbulence structure and seeing with angular decorrelation of image ellipticity used for estimating cosmic shear (Asztalos et al., this session). Additionally, we have used the SOAR Calibration Wave Front Sensor (CWFS) to obtain Shack-Hartmann time series of the MASS/DIMM reference star over three consecutive nights. The wavefront time series have 0.03 second exposures on 7 second intervals over several hours each night. Simms et al. (this session) have analyzed these data for temporal and spatial correlations in the wavefront and compared them to simulations using atmopheric structure as measured by the MASS/DIMM instrument.
- Publication:
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American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2005
- Bibcode:
- 2005AAS...207.2624C