Bibcode
Varela, Antonia M.; Muñoz-Tuñón, Casiana; García-Lorenzo, Begoña; Fuensalida, J. J.
Bibliographical reference
Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes. Edited by Stepp, Larry M.. Proceedings of the SPIE, Volume 6267, pp. 62671X (2006).
Advertised on:
7
2006
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (ORM) at La Palma (Canary Islands) is
one of the two top sites selected for hosting the future European Large
Telescope (ELT) (http://www.eso.org/projects/e-elt/), the other being
Paranal (in Chile). Meteorological and seeing conditions are crucial for
the site selection. New concepts related to geophysical properties
(seismicity and microsismicity), local climate variability, the presence
of aerosols, atmospheric conditions related to the optical turbulence
(tropospheric and ground wind regimes) have recently been introduced for
selecting sites for a new generation of Extremely Large Telescopes
(Munoz-Tunon 2002, Munoz-Tunon et al. 2003 a, 2003 b; Varela et al.,
2002; Varela & Munoz-Tunon, 2004; Varela et al., 2004 a, 2004 b) and
also for telescope design and feasibility studies for adaptive optics.
Wind speed at 200 mbar is one of the key parameters proposed for
characterizing atmospheric turbulence above the Observatory (Sarazin
& Tokovinin, 2002, Garcia-Lorenzo et al., 2005). A lower average 200
mbar wind speed is obtained at the ORM in comparison with other
astronomical sites; furthermore, the ORM ranks first in in suitability
for adaptive optics suitability (Garcia-Lorenzo et al., 2005). The
usefulness of this value might be conditional on the continuity of the
wind value and wind direction from the upper troposphere to the ground
level. With this motivation we are undertaking a study of tropospheric
and ground winds at several observing sites.