San Pedro Mártir: astronomical site evaluation

Cruz-Gonzales, Irene; Avila, Remy; Tapia, Mario; Angeles, Fernando; Carrasco, Esperanza; Conan, Rodolphe; Costero, Rafael; Cruz, D. X.; Cuevas, Salvador; Echevarria, J.; Garfias, Fernando; Gonzalez, S. I.; Gutierrez, Leonel; Harris, Oswaldo N.; Hiriart, D.; Ibanez, F.; Martinez, Luis A.; Masciadri, Elena; Michel, Raul M.; Orlov, Valeri G.; Parrao, L.; Sanchez, Beatriz; Sanchez, Leonardo J.; Sarazin, Marc S.; Schuster, W. J.; Voitsekhovich, Valeri V.; Agabi, A.; Azouit, Max; Borgnino, Julien; Martin, Francois; Vernin, Jean; Ziad, Aziz
Bibliographical reference

Second Backaskog Workshop on Extremely Large Telescopes. Edited by Ardeberg, Arne L.; Andersen, Torben. Proceedings of the SPIE, Volume 5382, pp. 634-642 (2004).

Advertised on:
7
2004
Number of authors
32
IAC number of authors
0
Citations
8
Refereed citations
4
Description
The Observatorio Astronomico Nacional at San Pedro Martir is situated on the summit of the San Pedro Martir Sierra in the Baja California peninsula of Mexico, at 2800m above sea level. For as long as three decades, a number of groups and individuals have gathered extremely valuable data leading to the site characterization for astronomical observations. Here we present a summary of the most important results obtained so far. The aspects covered are: weather, cloud coverage, local meteorology, atmospheric optical extinction, millimetric opacity, geotechnical studies, seeing, optical turbulence profiles, wind profiles and 3D simulations of atmospheric turbulence. The results place San Pedro Martir among the most favorable sites in the world for astronomical observations. It seems to be particularly well-suited for extremely large telescopes because of the excellent turbulence and local wind conditions, to mention but two characteristics. Long-term monitoring of some parameters still have to be undertaken. The National University of Mexico (UNAM) and other international institutions are putting a considerable effort in that sense.