Discovery of high-quality daytime seeing windows at the Antarctic Taishan station

Abstract

ABSTRACT We report on the initial results of seeing measurements at the Antarctic Taishan Station (ATS) using a differential image motion monitor observed in the visible at a height of 2.5 m above the snow surface, during the site-testing experiments carried out on 2014 January 13 and 15. The median seeing was found to be 0.73 arcsec and the 25th and 75th percentiles of the seeing cumulative distribution were 0.59 and 0.87 arcsec, respectively, with a minimum of ∼0.5 arcsec at ∼16:00–19:00 local time (UTC + 5). Such a seeing minimum has a good temporal association with the refractive index structure constant ($C_n^2$) minimum simultaneously observed at ATS. Interestingly, both temporal windows of $C_n^2$ and seeing minimum coincide with those of minimum temperature gradients ($\rm \sim 0\,^{\circ }C\,m^{-1}$), we had more than one month of continuous measurements of Cn2 and temperature gradients between 2013 December 30 and 2014 February 10. This suggests that high-quality seeing windows might be opened at ATS with the potential for astronomical activities, especially for solar observations.