Open Access
22 March 2023 Dome seeing analysis of the Anglo-Australian Telescope
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Abstract

Dome seeing is an often overlooked avenue for seeing improvement for a telescope. Because most existing telescope domes have not been characterized for turbulence, there is an opportunity to improve the overall seeing by minimizing the dome contribution, thereby optimizing scientific productivity and operations. A dome turbulence sensor has recorded data in the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) over the past year. The instrument consists of a collimated laser beam that propagates (and double passes) between the AAT’s primary mirror box and a flat mirror on the secondary strut. The angle-of-arrival fluctuations are used to derive a dome-seeing-proxy in arcsec. We found the dominant effects to be the temperature gradients and wind speed. Convection conditions are considerably more detrimental to the dome-seeing-proxy than thermal inversion conditions. Unlike other large telescopes, there is no discernible relationship between the dome-seeing-proxy and relative wind direction. Concerning telescope operations, it would be worth considering lowering the air-conditioning set point temperature to include a higher proportion of observations under thermal inversion. Nevertheless, this must be carefully weighed with the risk of condensation in the dome, a major concern for a site with frequent high relative humidity.

CC BY: © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.
Josephine Munro, Jonah Hansen, Tony Travouillon, Doris Grosse, and Andrei Tokovinin "Dome seeing analysis of the Anglo-Australian Telescope," Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems 9(1), 017004 (22 March 2023). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JATIS.9.1.017004
Received: 7 November 2022; Accepted: 3 March 2023; Published: 22 March 2023
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CITATIONS
Cited by 1 scholarly publication.
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KEYWORDS
Domes

Telescopes

Convection

Turbulence

Wind speed

Mirrors

Vibration

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