Issue |
EAS Publications Series
Volume 25, 2007
1st ARENA Conference on "Large Astronomical Infrastructures at CONCORDIA, prospects and constraints for Antarctic Optical/IR Astronomy"
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Page(s) | 31 - 34 | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/eas:2007068 | |
Published online | 23 May 2007 |
N. Epchtein and M. Candidi (eds)
EAS Publications Series, 25 (2007) 31-34
Characterisation of the Dome C Atmospheric Boundary Layer Turbulence with a Non-Doppler Acoustic Radar
1
School of Physics, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052,
Australia
2
Faculty of Science, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
Corresponding author: jl@phys.unsw.edu.au
The Antarctic plateau has superb astronomical seeing above a turbulent boundary layer. This layer has a thickness of between tens of metres and a few hundred metres, depending on the site. We are developing a sonic radar, SNODAR, to measure the turbulence in the boundary layer from 10 to 50 m, and, in particular, to measure the height of the boundary layer to an accuracy of 1 m. Commercial sonic radars typically have a lower limit of about 10 m, and have 10 m range bins. The results from SNODAR should allow a confident assessment of the height at which one must mount a telescope in order to realise the superb free atmosphere seeing from the Antarctic plateau, which has been measured at Dome C to be 0.27 arcsecs on average, and better than 0.15 arcsecs for 25% of the time.
© EAS, EDP Sciences, 2007