Site testing at astronomical sites: seeing evaluation from satellite based data

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel satellite-based method to estimate astronomical seeing conditions using IR data from GOES 12, achieving high correlation with ground measurements and enabling night quality forecasting.

Contribution

The study presents the first satellite remote sensing technique for estimating astronomical seeing, with a strong correlation to ground data and potential for night quality prediction.

Findings

Ground-satellite correlation of about 90%

Effective forecast of photometric night quality

First use of IR satellite data for seeing evaluation

Abstract

We present for the first time a new method to estimate the seeing using remote sounding from the IR night time data of the GOES 12 satellite. We discuss the derived correlation between the ground data and the satellite derived values from the analysis of the sites located at Cerro Paranal (Chile) and Roque de los Muchachos (Canary Islands, Spain). We get a ground-satellite correlation percentage of about 90%. Finally, studying the correlation between the afternoon data and the following night, we are able to provide a forecast of the photometric night quality.