Atmospheric Turbulence Measurements with the Palomar Testbed Interferometer

Abstract

Data from the Palomar Testbed Interferometer, with a baseline length of 110 and an observing wavelength of $2.2 \mu{\rm m}$, were used to derive information on atmospheric turbulence on 64 nights in 1999. The measured two-aperture variance coherence times at $2.2 \mu{\rm m}$ ranged from 25 msec to 415 msec (the lower value was set by instrumental limitations---the interferometer could not operate when the coherence time was lower than this). On all nights, the spectrum of the short time scale ($<600$ msec) delay fluctuations had a shallower spectrum than the theoretical Kolmogorov value of 5/3. On most nights, the mean value of the power law slope was between 1.40 and 1.50. Such a sub-Kolmogorov slope will result in the seeing improving as the $\approx 0.4$ power of wavelength, rather than the slower 0.2 power predicted by Kolmogorov theory. On four nights, the combination of delay and angle tracking measurements allowed a derivation of the (multiple) wind velocities of the turbulent layers, for a frozen-flow model. The derived wind velocities were all $\le 4 {\rm m s^{-1}}$, except for a small $10 {\rm s^{-1}}$ component on one night. The combination of measured coherence time, turbulence spectral slope, and wind velocity for the turbulent layer(s) allowed a robust solution for the outer scale size (beyond which the fluctuations do not increase). On the four nights with angle tracking data, the outer scale varied from 6 to 54 m, with most values in the 10-25 range. Such small outer scale values cause some components of visibility and astrometric errors to average down rapidly.