Abstract
Abstract Over 30 years of solar data have been acquired by the Birmingham Solar Oscillations Network (BiSON), an international network of telescopes used to study oscillations of the Sun. Five of the six BiSON telescopes are located at major observatories. The observational sites are, in order of increasing longitude: Mount Wilson (Hale) Observatory (MWO), California, USA; Las Campanas Observatory, Chile; Observatorio del Teide, Izaña, Tenerife, Canary Islands; the South African Astronomical Observatory, Sutherland, South Africa; Carnarvon, Western Australia; and the Paul Wild Observatory, Narrabri, New South Wales, Australia. The BiSON data may be used to measure atmospheric extinction coefficients in the band (approximately 700–900 nm), and presented here are the derived atmospheric extinction coefficients from each site over the years 1984–2016.
Highlights
The Birmingham Solar Oscillations Network (BiSON) is a six-site ground-based network of solar observatories
Morning data are collected over the plains of Western Australia, and afternoon data are collected through air over the Indian ocean, and so it is expected that the sandy environment of Carnarvon would have a greater impact on extinction during morning observations
There appears to be no significant difference between the two zones, and Las Campanas has the most stable atmosphere of all BiSON sites, showing the lowest standard deviation
Summary
The Birmingham Solar Oscillations Network (BiSON) is a six-site ground-based network of solar observatories. We take an alternative window into these data and assess the historic atmospheric column extinction coefficients at each of our international network sites, over the life of the network. The first instrument was commissioned at Observatorio del Teide in Izaña, Tenerife, in 1975, with the additional five nodes coming online throughout the mid-80s and early-90s. The observational sites are, in order of increasing longitude: Mount Wilson (Hale) Observatory (MWO), California, USA; Las Campanas Observatory (LCO), Chile; Observatorio del Teide, Izaña, Tenerife, Canary Islands; South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO), Sutherland, South Africa; Carnarvon, Western Australia; and Paul Wild Observatory, Narrabri, New South Wales, Australia.
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