Stellar Scintillation and the Atmosphere's Vertical Turbulence Profile
Abstract
The relationship between stellar scintillation in the strong-focusing regime and the atmosphere's vertical turbulence profile is investigated with numerical simulation. For two distinct atmospheric profiles, the irradiance variance at a point on a telescope aperture is evaluated as a function of the weighted path-integrated turbulence (i.e., Rytov variance). Additionally, we compute the aperture-averaged irradiance variance and the log-amplitude correlation across the aperture as functions of the Rytov variance. For one atmospheric profile, scintillation is dominated by turbulence in the tropopause; for the other, scintillation arises from turbulence in both the tropopause and the lower troposphere. The numerical results indicate that: (1) stellar scintillation depends on the actual profile of atmospheric turbulence and not just on its weighted integral, and (2) in the strong-focusing regime the irradiance variance is determined primarily by an optical wave's coherence length as it passes through the tropopause.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jul 01, 2001
- Accession Number
- ADA397651
Entities
People
- James C. Camparo
Organizations
- The Aerospace Corporation