PARTICIPANTS

In La Serena:

Bob Blum, Hugo Schwarz, Malcolm Smith, Nick Suntzeff, Andrei Tokovinin, Alistair Walker (NOAO-CTIO), Tom Sebring (SOAR) Esperanza Carrasco (INAOE), Elena Masciadri (UNAM), Marc Sarazin (ESO), Matthias Schoeck (UC Irvine, CELT), Richard Wainscoat (IfA Hawaii), Riccardo Giovanelli (Cornell), Andre Erasmus (SAAO).

Remote:

Dave De Young, Steve Strom, Larry Stepp, Brooke Gregory, Sidney Wolff (Tucson), Jerry Nelson, Mike Bolte (Santa Cruz), George Djorgovski (Pasadena), Remy Avila (Morelia).

MEETING GOALS

The purpose of the meeting is to identify the next steps for defining the selection and evaluation criteria for sites in the Western Hemisphere (SW USA to Chile), including comparison to Mauna Kea. We believe the area that needs attention in particular is that of modeling and measuring wind flow & turbulence, on all relevant scales. There are a number of modeling efforts underway or proposed, and various experimental methods available or under development. What we want to do is to discuss what has to bedone in order to ensure that we can make accurate and reliable inter-comparisons between regions and specific sites, and that what we are measuring or modeling are the relevant quantities for ELT's. We also need to be in sync. with what ESO is doing or proposes to do for OWL Telescope site testing.

PROGRAM:

Monday October 22:

1230-1345 LUNCH, at the CTIO Conf. Room

1400-1410 Welcome, Meeting Goals, Agenda Review (Alistair Walker)

1410-1420 Western Hemisphere Cloud Cover Surveys (see above for 2 slides) (Alistair Walker)

1420-1450 Site test parameters (Andre Erasmus)

1450-1520 The NIO/CTIO site-testing program [html] [ppt] (Bob Blum)

1520-1550 A site for CELT (Matthias Schoeck)

1550-1620 A nest for OWL (Marc Sarazin)

1620-1650 Break

1650-1720 Chajnantor and the Cornell-Texas Telescope [ppt] [html] (Riccardo Giovanelli)

1720-1750 The NIO/Gemini testing of Mauna Kea (Richard Wainscoat)

1750-1815 Site Testing at Cerro La Negra [ppt] [html] (Esperanza Carrasco)

1815-1845 Site testing at San Pedro Martir [ppt] [html] (Remy Avila)

1845-1915 Light Pollution in the ELT Context [html] [ppt] (Malcolm Smith)

2000 Dinner at Bakulic, Avenida del Mar

Tuesday October 23:

1200-1400 Round-table discussion (Optical Turbulence Parameters, see background material below.)

MICRO-SCALE MODELING:

Dave De Young did high resolution modeling for the Gemini sites on MK and Pachon, and is also involved in modeling of the Chajnantor region for Cornell & ALMA, and in the modeling for the "30-m site" on MK. Here are his figures:

[fig1] [fig2] [fig3] [fig4] [fig5] [fig6]

MESO-SCALE MODELING:

NCEP use, slides from Andre Erasmus [ppt] [html]

1400-1430 LUNCH

1430-1530 Round Table cont.

1530-1600 Wrap-up

Meeting Report

A summary of the Tuesday discussions, actions, issues, etc. (revised Oct 26 2001)

Background material:

Atmospheric Parameters relevant for ELT site testing

NIO: http://www.aura-nio.noao.edu/

NIO/CTIO sites: http://www.ctio.noao.edu/sitetests/

Elena M.: http://www.astroscu.unam.mx/~elena/

Andrei T.: http://www.ctio.noao.edu/~atokovin/profiler.html

De Young, D.S. & Charles, R.D. 1995, AJ,110,3107; De Young, D.S. 1996, AJ,112,2896

MK: http://hokukea.soest.hawaii.edu/forecast/mko/

ESO: http://www.eso.org/gen-fac/pubs/astclim/paranal/seeing/adaptive-optics/

GSM: http://www-astro.unice.fr/GSM/ or http://www-astro.unice.fr/GSM/TestZone/release2.1/index.html

Mauna Kea Master Plan: http://www.hawaii.edu/maunakea/