Characterization of atmospheric turbulence for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope

Abstract

One of the scientific goals of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is to measure the evolution of dark energy by measuring subtle distortions of galaxy shapes due to weak gravitational lensing caused by the evolving dark matter distribution. Understanding the point spread function (PSF) for LSST is a crucial step to accurate measurements of weak gravitational lensing. Atmospheric contributions dominate the LSST PSF. Simulations of Kolmogorov turbulence models are commonly used to characterize and correct for these atmospheric effects. In order to validate these simulations, we compare the predicted atmospheric behavior to empirical data. The simulations are carried out in GalSim, an open-source software package for simulating images of astronomical objects and PSFs. Atmospheric simulations are run by generating large phase screens at varying altitude and evolving them over long time scales. We compare the turbulence strength and temporal behavior of atmospheres generated from simulations to those from reconstructed telemetry data from the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI). GPI captures a range of spatial frequencies by sampling the atmosphere with 18-cm subapertures. The LSST weak lensing analysis will measure correlations of galaxy ellipticity, requiring very accurate knowledge of the magnitude and correlations of PSF shape parameters. Following from the first analysis, we use simulations and sequential short exposure observations from the Differential Speckle Survey Instrument (DSSI) to study the behavior of PSF parameters - e.g., ellipticity and size - as a function of exposure time. These studies could help inform discussions of possible variable exposure times for LSST visits for example, to provide more uniform depth of visits.