ITEDA   22747
INSTITUTO DE TECNOLOGIA EN DETECCION Y ASTROPARTICULAS
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
artículos
Título:
Evaluation of the sky quality at two Argentinian Astronomical Sites
Autor/es:
AUBE, MARTIN; FORTIN, N.; TURCOTTE, S.; GARCIA, B; MANCILLA, A.; MAYA, J.
Revista:
PUBLICATIONS OF THE ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY OF THE PACIFIC
Editorial:
UNIV CHICAGO PRESS
Referencias:
Lugar: Chicago; Año: 2014 vol. 126 p. 1068 - 1077
ISSN:
0004-6280
Resumen:
Light pollution is a growing concern at many levels, especially for the
astronomical community. Indeed, not only does artificial lighting veil
celestial objects, it disturbs the measurement of many atmospheric
phenomena. The sky brightness is one of the most relevant parameters for
astronomical site selection. Our goal is to evaluate the sky brightness
of two Argentinian observation sites: LEO ++ and El Leoncito. Both sites
were preselected to host the Cherenkov Telescope Array. This project
consists of an arrangement of many telescopes that can measure
high-energy gamma ray emissions via their Cherenkov radiation produced
when entering the earth's atmosphere. In this paper, we describe the
measurement methods used to determine whether those sites are valuable
or not. We compared our results with the sky radiance of different
renowned astronomical sites (Kitt Peak, Arizona, and
Mont-Mégantic, Québec, Canada). Among our results, we
found that LEO ++ is a good site, however the presence of a low layer of
local aerosol can introduce uncertainties in the measurements.
Consequently, El Leoncito would be a better option for such an
installation. This latter site shows very low sky brightness levels,
which are optimal for low light detection.