CaltechAUTHORS
Published January 30, 2003 | Version Published
Book Section - Chapter Open

CELT site testing program

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon University of California, Irvine
  • 2. ROR icon South African Radio Astronomy Observatory
  • 3. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 4. ROR icon University of California, Santa Cruz

Contributors

Abstract

The California Extremely Large Telescope, CELT, is a proposed 30-m telescope. Choosing the best possible site for CELT is essential in order to extract the best science from the observations and to reduce the complexity of the telescope. Site selection is therefore currently one of the most critical pacing items of the CELT project. In this paper, we first present selected results from a survey of the atmospheric transparency at optical and infrared wavelengths over the southwestern USA and northern Mexico using satellite data. Results of a similar study of South America have been reported elsewhere. These studies will serve as the pre-selection criterion of the sites at which we will perform on-site testing. We then describe the current status of on-site turbulence evaluation efforts and the future plans of the CELT site testing program.

Additional Information

© 2003 Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). The CELT site selection project has benefited greatly from our collaboration with the Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope (GSMT) site selection group of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), in particular with Alistair Walker, Robert Blum, Hugo Schwarz, and Andrei Tokovinin. We also thank Marc Sarazin from European Southern Observatory (ESO) for many useful discussions. This work has been supported in part by the National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center for Adaptive Optics, managed by the University of California at Santa Cruz under cooperative agreement No. AST-9876783.

Attached Files

Published - 541.pdf

Files

541.pdf

Files (762.6 kB)

Name Size Download all
md5:5a5057bc92f7590028c5c4e18f5f997f
762.6 kB Preview Download

Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
87685
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20180710-091738917

Funding

NSF
AST-9876783

Dates

Created
2018-07-10
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2021-11-15
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech Custom Metadata

Series Name
Proceedings of SPIE
Series Volume or Issue Number
4840