Improved detection of atmospheric turbulence with SLODAR

TL;DR

This paper enhances atmospheric turbulence detection with SLODAR by addressing propagation effects, separating mirror/dome seeing, and introducing a novel Generalized SLODAR technique for improved height resolution.

Contribution

It introduces a new method, Generalized SLODAR, that significantly improves height resolution and accounts for propagation effects and local turbulence sources.

Findings

Propagation effects can cause underestimation of high-altitude turbulence by ~30%.

Mirror and dome seeing can contribute up to ~50% of measured ground-layer turbulence.

Generalized SLODAR improves height resolution by a factor of 3.

Abstract

We discuss several improvements in the detection of atmospheric turbulence using SLOpe Detection And Ranging (SLODAR). Frequently, SLODAR observations have shown strong ground-layer turbulence, which is beneficial to adaptive optics. We show that current methods which neglect atmospheric propagation effects can underestimate the strength of high altitude turbulence by up to ~ 30%. We show that mirror and dome seeing turbulence can be a significant fraction of measured ground-layer turbulence, some cases up to ~ 50%. We also demonstrate a novel technique to improve the nominal height resolution, by a factor of 3, called Generalized SLODAR. This can be applied when sampling high-altitude turbulence, where the nominal height resolution is the poorest, or for resolving details in the important ground-layer.