VERNIN , Jean

The idea of starting an astronomical site testing in Antarctica began during a congress organized by French Académie des Sciences, in 1992, and entitled 'Recherches polaires-Une Stratégie pour l'an 2000'. At this time, one of us (Vernin 1994) gave a proposal for an astronomical site testing in Antarctica. This proposal was rapidly followed by a...

We present an iterative method for deriving wind profiles from Generalized SCIDAR measurements, which can work in a non-supervised mode. It is an extension of our CLEAN-based method previously developed for C N 2 profile determination. The algorithm is based on a morphological analysis of the cross-correlation function of consecutive...

We present the results of monitoring the speed of optical turbulent layers in the atmosphere above San Pedro Mártir, Mexico, during 16 nights in May 2000. The data were obtained using the generalized scintillation detection and ranging technique (generalized scidar), developed at Nice University. This paper constitutes the second part of Avila...

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International audience

During the austral winter 2005, the first astronomical site testing campaign were performed at Dome C, in Antarctica. Thirty-five meteorological balloons equipped with microthermal sensors were used to sense the vertical profile of the optical turbulence intensity above Dome C up to 20 km. All the profiles of the 2005 campaign are statistically...

Dome C in Antarctica is a particular astronomical site when considering the optical turbulence conditions. From the first winterover campaign performed in 2005 at Dome C, the set of 34 meteorological balloon profiles has been analyzed. The meteorological balloons were equipped with microthermal sensors used to sense the vertical profile of the...

We report site testing results obtained in night-time during the polar autumn and winter at Dome C. These results were collected during the first Concordia winterover by A. Agabi. They are based upon seeing and isoplanatic angle monitoring, as well as in-situ balloon measurements 2 of the refractive index structure constant profiles Cn (h)....

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We present summer site testing results based on DIMM data obtained at Dome C, Antarctica. These data have been collected on the bright star Canopus during two 3-months summer campaigns in 2003-2004 and 2004-2005. We performed continuous monitoring of the seeing a nd the isoplanatic angle in the visible. We found a median seeing of 0.54 \arcsec...

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Recent site seeing testing campaigns conducted by our team from University of Nice1 show that Dome C represents the best site on Earth for astronomical high angular resolution (HAR) observations at optical and IR wavelengths. The dramatic gain over relevant HAR parameters r0, L0, θ0 and τ0, added to very low temperatures during the polar winter...