Contents

• Abstract
• Acknowledgements
• Curriculum vitae of the author
  • List of main symbols
• Introduction
  • General presentation
  • Scope and summary
  • The ESO Very Large Telescope
• The image quality of a telescope
  • Seeing
  • Thermal turbulence, light propagation and image size
    • The microstructure of the temperature field in the atmosphere
    • The microstructure of the index of refraction and its relationship with "seeing"
  • Effects of wind loads
    • Wind turbulence
    • Guiding errors
    • Wind buffeting on "thin" primary mirrors
  • The overall image quality and its budget
• Telescope enclosures
  • The requirements of telescope enclosures
  • The recent evolution of design concepts for telescope enclosures
    • Classical domes
    • The MMT and its rotating building
    • Improvements in conventional domes
    • The ESO New Technology Telescope
    • The ESO Very Large Telescope
    • Open issues
• Telescope aerodynamics
  • Wind loading on telescopes
    • Classical domes
      • Measuring equipment and procedure
      • Results
    • NTT rotating building
    • Cylindrical enclosure (VLT)
    • Retractable enclosure
    • Synthesis
  • Wind loading on the primary mirror
    • Outline of the problem
    • Wind tunnel tests with the telescope exposed
    • Tests with the 3.5-m mirror dummy
      • Measurements
      • Main results
      • Relationship between pressure fluctuations and wavefront aberrations
    • Wind tunnel measurements of the pressure/velocity field on the mirror
      • Measurements
      • Pressure-speed correlation
    • Synthesis of study results and engineering conclusions
• Local "seeing"
  • The relationship of CT2 to the mean velocity and temperature fields
  • Dome seeing
    • A review of previous studies on dome seeing
    • Causes of dome seeing
    • Scaling variables and similarity of dome seeing
    • An order-of-magnitude estimate of dome seeing
    • Mirror seeing
    • Analysis of telescope image quality data data
    • Seeing caused by heat generation at the secondary mirror unit
    • Seeing and natural ventilation
    • Synthesis
  • Mirror seeing
    • Physical description of mirror seeing
      • Free convection
      • Mixed and forced convection
      • The cold mirror case
    • Experimental studies
      • A mirror seeing experiment with a 4-cm mirror
      • Seeing tests on a 62-cm mirror
      • Seeing tests on a 254-mm mirror
      • Other laboratory measurements
    • Analysis and modelisation
      • Mirror in free convection
      • Ventilated mirror
    • Synthesis
  • Surface layer seeing
    • The optimum height of a telescope base
    • Reduced scale simulation of near-ground seeing
      • Similarity rules for near-ground flow
      • Pilot test for direct measurement of seeing
• System Engineering
  • Random conditions and operational aspects
  • A statistical model of telescope image quality
    • Parameterisation of seeing and guiding effects
      • Wind versus seeing for the primary mirror
      • Guiding errors
      • Computation of the CIR figure
    • Computation procedure
    • Results and discussion
    • Synthesis
• Conclusions
• References

• List of main symbols