7 August 2024 Daytime turbulence strength profile measurement at Kodaikanal Observatory
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Abstract

The Indian Institute of Astrophysics is developing a Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics system for the Kodaikanal Tower Telescope. In this context, we measured the daytime turbulence strength profile at the Kodaikanal Observatory. The first method based on wavefront sensor images, called solar differential image motion monitor+, was used to estimate the higher altitude turbulence up to a height of 5 to 6 km. The second method used balloon-borne temperature sensors to measure the near-Earth turbulence up to 350 m. We also carried out simulations to validate the performance of our system. We report the first-ever daytime turbulence strength profile measurements at the observatory. We identified the presence of a strong turbulence layer 3 km above the observatory. The measured near-Earth turbulence matches the trend that is expected from the model for a daytime component of turbulence and gives an integrated r0 of 4 cm at 500 nm. This is consistent with earlier seeing measurements. This shows that a low-cost setup with a small telescope and a simple array of temperature sensors can be used for estimating the turbulence strength profile at the site.

© 2024 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)
Saraswathi Kalyani Subramanian, Sridharan Rengaswamy, Prasanna Gajanana Deshmukh, Binukumar G. Nair, and S. Mahesh Babu "Daytime turbulence strength profile measurement at Kodaikanal Observatory," Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems 10(3), 039004 (7 August 2024). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JATIS.10.3.039004
Received: 11 April 2024; Accepted: 15 July 2024; Published: 7 August 2024
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KEYWORDS
Turbulence

Sensors

Balloons

Telescopes

Observatories

Simulations

Motion measurement

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