Colloquium on May. 21, 2020

Brief review of the site testing campaign in western part of China, 2017-2019 and ground layer turbulence monitor results at Ali site

Speaker: Lu Feng (NAOC)

Venue: Video Conference

Time: 15:00 PM, Thursday, May. 21, 2020

Abstract: 

Western part of China is well known to be a potential host for optical/infrared telescope. This is because  sites in this region have favorable characteristics for optical/infrared telescope, such as, excellent seeing, low sky background, less cloud coverage, and low precipitable wave vapor, etc. Initiated by the Large Optical/Infrared Telescope project, NAOC, YAO, XAO, NIAOT and SHAO joined together and set forth a site testing campaign to explore suitable location for the telescope, and later specifically, to monitor three chosen sites continuously in long term. This is the first attempt to evaluate long term performances of three candidate sites with uniformly calibrated instruments and data collecting/processing methods for a two-years span in China. Its results are going to be published in the next special issue of RAA. In this report, I will briefly review this site testing campaign and results obtained. I will also introduce some of the monitoring results of ground layer turbulence at Ali site A using our lunar scintillometer in 2019.