Site characterisation at mount stromlo observatory: The first results

Abstract

We present the status of the site-characterisation campaign that has been started to aid the development of new adaptive optics systems at the Mount Stromlo Observatory. Our goal is to use a particularly designed stereo-SCIDAR system that uses a roof prism to separate beams from a double-star system to obtain two isolated pupil images on a single detector. Currently, the instrument is partially finished and operates as a generalised SCIDAR. The first results and their analysis are shown. We see that the instrument is working as intended: the data shows no sign of harmful artefacts and the atmospheric profiles follow expected patterns. In addition, we show a comparison of two possible methods to post-process Stereo-SCIDAR data: classical SCIDAR approach and a peak-detection based algorithm. Both algorithms agree on the broad features of the turbulence, but the latter is able to reach finer altitude resolution. Show more