Sebastian Els
CTIO
 

"Site testing for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) and the site conditions at Cerro Tololo"
 

To identify the most suitable location to host TMT, an extensive site testing campaign was conducted over the course of the last 5 years at the five candidate sites Cerro Tolar, Cerro Armazones, Cerro Tolonchar (all three in northern Chile), San Pedro Martir in Mexico and 13N ontop of Mauna Kea.

This campaign was accompanied by rigorous instrument calibration studies, partly conducted at CTIO. By 2008 all site testing stations had been operated for at least two annual cycles on each site and the obtained data reveal the differences of the atmosphere at these mountains. These data are the scientific foundation for the upcoming decision where to build TMT.

In this talk the employed methods will be described and an overview of the results will be given. Also results of the last four years of sites monitoring at CTIO will be presented.