Identifying Clouds over the Pierre Auger Observatory using IR Satellite Data

THE PIERRE AUGER COLABORATION; C. JARNE

ASTROPARTICLE PHYSICS

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2013 p. 1 - 10

0927-6505

We describe a new method of identifying night-time clouds over the Pierre Auger Observatory using infrared data from the Imager instruments on the GOES-12 and GOES-13 satellites. We compare cloud identifications resulting from our method to those obtained by the Central Laser Facility of the Auger Observatory. Using our new method we can now develop cloud probability maps for the 3000 km2 of the Pierre Auger Observatory twice per hour with a spatial resolution of2.4 km by5.5 km. Our method could also be applied to monitor cloud cover for other ground-based observatories and for space-based observatories.