The Development of Single Star Scidar for Tibet and Dome A

TL;DR

The paper presents the development and deployment of a portable Single Star Scidar system for remotely sensing atmospheric turbulence profiles at high-altitude sites like Tibet and Dome A, using a small telescope and automated remote operation.

Contribution

It introduces a new portable, automated Single Star Scidar system capable of remotely measuring atmospheric turbulence and wind profiles at remote high-altitude sites.

Findings

Successfully retrieved turbulence and wind profiles up to 30 km altitude.

Demonstrated the system's portability and remote operation capabilities.

Characterized atmospheric parameters at Xinglong station.

Abstract

A Single Star Scidar system(SSS) has been developed for remotely sensing atmospheric turbulence profiles. The SSS consists of computing the spatial auto/cross-correlation functions of short exposure images of the scintillation patterns produced by a single star, and provides the vertical profiles of optical turbulence intensity C2n(h) and wind speed V(h). The SSS needs only a 40 cm aperture telescope, so that can be portable and equipped easily to field candidate sites. Some experiments for the SSS have been made in Beijing last year, successfully retrieving atmospheric turbulence and wind profiles from the ground to 30 km. The SSS observations has recently been made at the Xinglong station of NAOC, characterizing atmospheric parameters at this station. We plan to automatize SSS instrument and run remote observation via internet; a more friendly auto-SSS system will be set up and make use at the candidate sites in Tibet and Dome A.