Bibcode
Varela, Antonia M.; Muñoz-Tuñón, Casiana
Bibliographical reference
Optical Turbulence: Astronomy Meets Meteorology, Proceedings of the Astronomy Meets Meteorology, Proceedings of the Optical Turbulence Characterization for Astronomical Applications Sardinia, Italy, 15 - 18 September 2008, edited by Elena Masciadri (Instituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, Italy) & Marc Sarazin (European Southern Observatory, Germany), pp. 256-263 (2010).
Advertised on:
9
2009
Citations
3
Refereed citations
3
Description
The Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (ORM) at La Palma (Canary
Islands) is one of the two top pre-selected sites for hosting the future
European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), the other ones are
Ventarrones (Chile), Macon (Argentine) and Aklim (Maroc). Meteorological
and seeing conditions are crucial both for the site selection and for
telescope design and feasibility studies for adaptive optics. The ELTs
shall be very sensitive to wind behavior when operating in open air,
therefore ground level wind velocity and wind gust are also required for
the feasibility of the telescope construction. Here we analyze the wind
speed and wind direction, the air temperature, the relative humidity and
the barometric pressure statistical results obtained from data recorded
at different sites at the ORM by several Automatic Weather Stations
(AWS) since 1985, day and night time separately. Ground wind speed
regimes (775mbar) are compared with those provided by satellites from
200 to 700mbar. There exists also observational evidence of the
correlation between the seeing and the wind speed and wind direction
that will be discussed in this work.