Avila R, Vernin J, Masciadri E. Whole atmospheric-turbulence profiling with generalized scidar.
APPLIED OPTICS 1997;
36:7898-7905. [PMID:
18264318 DOI:
10.1364/ao.36.007898]
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Abstract
Statistical analysis of stellar scintillation on the pupil of a telescope, known as the scidar (scintillation, detection, and ranging) technique, is sensitive only to atmospheric turbulence at altitudes higher than a few kilometers. With the generalized scidar technique, recently proposed and tested under laboratory conditions, one can overcome this limitation by analyzing the scintillation on a plane away from the pupil. We report the first experimental implementation of this technique, to our knowledge, under real atmospheric conditions as a vertical profiler of the refractive-index structure constant C (N)(2) (h). The instrument was adapted to the Nordic Optical Telescope and the William Hershel Telescope at La Palma, Canary Islands. We measure the spatial autocorrelation function of double-star scintillation for different positions of the analysis plane, finding good agreement with theoretical expectations.
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