CATS: an autonomous station for atmospheric turbulence characterization

From its long expertise in Atmospheric Optics, the J.L. Lagrange Laboratory of the Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur has developed a new generation of autonomous stations of atmospheric turbulence measurement. Since two years, the Calern Observatory is equipped with this kind of stations called CATS for Calern Atmospheric Turbulence Station. CATS is an autonomous station consisting of a set of complementary instruments within original techniques for measuring optical turbulence since the first meters above the ground to the borders of the atmosphere including the dome seeing. Indeed, one of the CATS instruments is the PML (Profiler of Moon Limb) measuring the vertical distribution of turbulence using lunar and solar limbs with a resolution reaching 100m in the ground layer. The second instrument is a Generalized DIMM dedicated to provide wavefront parameters at ground level (seeing, outer scale, coherence time and isoplanatic angle). A third instrument called INTENSE (INdoor TurbulENce Sensor) is occasionally associated with CATS station to measure the turbulence inside the dome of the 1.5m MeO telescope to evaluate its contribution to the whole turbulence. The CATS station is also a support for our educative activities as part of our Masters in Astronomy and Optics, through the organization of on-sky training works.