Analysis of Atmospheric Seeing Measurements

Atmospheric seeing refers to the blurring and steadiness in the image of astronomical objects caused by the Earth atmospheric turbulence when observed through a telescope. Thermal convection in the atmosphere produces turbulence cells having different optical refraction indexes, leading to perturbations and distortions of the incoming light wave fronts. Atmospheric seeing quality affects almost all ground-based optical astronomy, from choice of site to telescope design to interpretation of data. Although adaptive optics systems are designed to improve observations, atmospheric seeing causes the image quality to degrade the further you look from the location of target. This is particularly relevant for the new and future generation of telescopes, making quantitative seeing measurements increasingly more important.

The team has been given access to time series of atmospheric seeing measurements taken at different locations worldwide, covering multiple years of observations from GONG . We are expected to perform some very basic statistical analysis on those time series to characterize the overall quality of the different sites. Some general knowledge of statistics is desirable, although not required. The project involves data manipulation . We use IDL (Interactive Data Language) as a primary computer language . The results from this project is relevant in planning for future sites survey.