Atmospheric transmission for submillimetre astronomy
Atmospheric transmission for submillimetre astronomy
We used data from IASI (Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer) on the Metop-A satellite to retrieve water vapour profiles for 11 sites (comprising Antarctica, Chile, Mauna Kea, Greenland, Tibet). The use of a single instrument to make the comparison provides unbiased data with a common calibration method. The profiles are integrated to above the mountain/stratospheric altitude get an estimation of the PWV. We then applied the atmospheric model MOLIERE (Microwave Observation and LIne Estimation and REtrieval) to compute the corresponding atmospheric absorption for wavelengths between 150 μm and 3 mm.
Sites available
PWV/Transmission Calculator
If you use this calculator, we would appreciate that you refer to our paper: Tremblin, Schneider, Minier, Durand, & Urban, 2012, and that you acknowledge its use as follows: This work makes use of the PWV/atmosphere transmission calculator developped at CEA/Irfu, France.
South-American sites
Chajnantor Plateau in Chile: ALMA (Atacama Large Millimetre Array) site, http://www.almaobservatory.org
Cerro Chajnantor in Chile: CCAT (Cornell Caltech Atacama Telescope), http://www.ccatobservatory.org
Cerro Macon in Argentinia
Northern-hemisphere sites
Mauna Kea in Hawaii: JCMT (James Clerk Maxwell Telescope), http://www.jach.hawaii.edu
Summit in Greenland: http://www.geosummit.org
Yangbajing in Tibet: KOSMA (Cologne Observatory for submm-astronomy), http://www.astro.uni-koeln.de/kosma
“Stratospheric” sites
SOFIA over Palmdale (USA) and Christchurch (New Zealand), http://www.sofia.usra.edu
