Paranal CUTE-SCIDAR Long Term Monitoring

Information regarding the CUTE-SCIDAR at Paranal

The site characterization campaign for the European Extremely Large Telescope pays much attention to the study of the vertical distribution of the atmospheric turbulence. Among the available profiling methods, the Generalized SCIDAR (SCIntillation Detection and Ranging) technique is the most comprehensive, but needs apertures above 1 m diameter. A modern application, the Cute-SCIDAR was developed by IAC and a copy was installed at the focus of one of the VLTI Auxiliary Telescopes (AT) with European FP6 funding. The aim is to compare the quality of the Canaries and Northern Chile sites with respect to parameters of importance for Adaptive Optics and to estimate the performance of full vs. partial correction modes.

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