Effects of wind-driven telescope vibrations on measurements of turbulent angle-of-arrival fluctuations.

Abstract

Turbulence in the atmospheric refractive-index field causes optical angle-of-arrival (AOA) fluctuations that can be used for atmospheric remote sensing of various parameters, including wind velocities and the optical refractive-index turbulence structure parameter, C(n)2. If AOA measurements are contaminated by wind-induced telescope vibrations, the underlying retrieval algorithms may fail. In order to study the effects of wind-driven telescope vibrations on optical-turbulence measurements, we conducted a field experiment in which we exposed two small telescopes deliberately to the wind. We measured AOA fluctuations of visible light propagating along a horizontal, 174 m long path 1.7 m above flat terrain, and we used fast-response ultrasonic anemometers to measure the wind velocity at multiple locations along the path. We found (1) that the AOA turbulence spectra were contaminated by multiple resonance peaks, (2) that the resonance frequencies were independent of the wind speed, and (3) that the AOA variance associated with the dominating vibration mode was proportional to the fourth power of the wind speed.