Mount Pinatubo and Atmospheric Extinction at Mount John University Observatory 1987-94

SAOZ (Systeme d'Analyse par Observation Zenitale) is a balloon born experiment which determines the column density of several molecular species from the visible spectrum of sunlight. We will use sequence of spectra collected during a sunset to discuss atmospheric extinction, and the nature of the radiation field in the atmosphere. The radiation field in the atmosphere is, from daylight to sunset, and with a clear sky, dominated by light coming from the direction of the sun. T...

The measurement of type Ia supernova colours in photometric surveys is the key to access to cosmological distances. But for future large surveys like the Large Survey of Space and Time undertaken by the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile, the large statistical power of the promised catalogues will make the photometric calibration uncertainties dominant in the error budget and will limit our ability to use it for precision cosmology. The knowledge of the on-site atmospheric trans...

Canary Islands are normally interested by dominant North-East winds that, in some meteorological conditions, can transport sand at high altitude from the Sahara desert. The dust may affect the efficiency of the telescopes and decreases the transparency of the sky. In order to maximize the scientific return of the telescopes located at the ORM, we present an analysis of the atmospheric dust content and its effects on astronomical observations. B, V and I dust aerosol astronomi...

This report provides a summary and bibliography for the research activities at the Princeton University Observatory and Department of Astrophysical Sciences during the period July 1, 1997 to June 30, 1998.

In this paper I review a series of observations which do not agree with the standard interpretation of the extinction curve. The consequence is that light we receive from a reddened star must be contaminated by starlight scattered at very small angular distances from the star. The true extinction curve is a straight line from the near infrared to the far-UV. If so, all interstellar grains models must be questionned. Another conclusion concerns the average properties of inters...

The work is devoted to the analysis of the surface photometric observations of two total lunar eclipses in 2004. The lunar surface relative brightness distribution inside the umbra was used to retrieve the vertical distribution of aerosol extinction of the solar radiation expanding by a tangent path and its dependence on the location at the limb of the Earth. The upper altitude of troposphere aerosol layer was estimated for different latitude zones. The correlation between ad...

Motivated by the recognition that variation in the optical transmission of the atmosphere is probably the main limitation to the precision of ground-based CCD measurements of celestial fluxes, we review the physical processes that attenuate the passage of light through the Earth's atmosphere. The next generation of astronomical surveys, such as PanSTARRS and LSST, will greatly benefit from dedicated apparatus to obtain atmospheric transmission data that can be associated with...

The recent discovery of exceptional seeing conditions at Dome C, Antarctica, raises the possibility of constructing an optical observatory there with unique capabilities. However, little is known from an astronomer's perspective about the optical sky brightness and extinction at Antarctic sites. We review the contributions to sky brightness at high-latitude sites, and calculate the amount of usable dark time at Dome C. We also explore the implications of the limited sky cover...

We have produced a data base of V-band and B-band night-sky brightness measurements rather evenly spread out over the course of a whole sunspot cycle from September 1985 to August 1996. Almost all the data were obtained at the 2800-m level of Mauna Kea using the same telescope, same photomultiplier tube, filters, and diaphragm, thus minimizing various sources of systematic error and allowing an estimate of the sources of random error. The yearly V-band averages of observed sk...

The Fluorescence Detector (FD) of the Pierre Auger Observatory provides a nearly calorimetric measurement of the primary particle energy, since the fluorescence light produced is proportional to the energy dissipated by an Extensive Air Shower (EAS) in the atmosphere. The atmosphere therefore acts as a giant calorimeter, whose properties need to be well known during data taking. Aerosols play a key role in this scenario, since their effect on light transmission is highly vari...