The statistics of the photometric accuracy based on MASS data and the evaluation of high-altitude wind

TL;DR

This paper analyzes stellar scintillation's impact on photometric accuracy, proposes a method to estimate a key index directly from MASS data, and demonstrates its effectiveness in estimating high-altitude wind speeds.

Contribution

It introduces a new method to determine the $S_3$ index from MASS data without wind profile info, aiding high-altitude wind estimation.

Findings

The $S_3$ index can be estimated directly from MASS measurements.

MASS data correlates well with NCEP/NCAR wind models.

The method enables high-altitude wind speed estimation from scintillation data.

Abstract

The effect of stellar scintillation on the accuracy of photometric measurements is analyzed. We obtain a convenient form of estimaton of this effect in the long exposure regime, when the turbulence shift produced by the wind is much larger than the aperture of the telescope. A simple method is proposed to determine index $S_3$ introduced by perture of the Kenyon et al. (2006), directly from the measurements with the Multi Aperture Scintillation Sensor (MASS) without information on vertical profile of the wind. The statistics $S_3$ resulting from our campaign of 2005 -- 2007 at Maidanak observatory is presented. It is shown that these data can be used to estimate high-altitude winds at pressure level 70 -- 100 mbar. Comparison with the wind speed retrieved from the NCEP/NCAR global models shows a good agreement. Some prospects for retrieval of the wind speed profile from the MASS measurements are outlined.