APEX atmospheric profiles Virtual Observatory Resource

Authors
  1. Pardo J.R.
  2. De Breuck C.
  3. Muders D.
  4. Gonzalez J.
  5. Montenegro-Montes F.M.,Perez-Beaupuits J.P.
  6. Cernicharo J.
  7. Prigent C.
  8. Serabyn E.
  9. Mroczkowski T.,Phillips N.
  10. Published by
    CDS
Abstract

Ground-based telescopes observing at millimeter (mm) and submillimeter (submm) wavelengths have to deal with a line-rich and highly variable atmospheric spectrum, both in space and time. Models of this spectrum play an important role in planning observations that are appropriate for the weather conditions and also calibrating those observations. Through magnetic dipolar (M1) rotational transitions and electric dipolar (E1) transitions O_2_ and H_2_O, respectively, dominate the atmospheric opacity in this part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Although O2 lines, and more generally the so-called dry opacity, are relatively constant, the absorption related to H_2_O can change by several orders of magnitude leading from a totally opaque atmosphere near sea level with high H_2_O columns to frequency windows with good transmission from high and dry mountain sites. Other minor atmospheric gases, such as O_3_ and N_2_O among others, are present in the atmospheric spectrum which also includes nonresonant collision-induced absorption due to several mechanisms. The aim of our research is to improve the characterization of the mm/submm atmospheric spectrum using very stable heterodyne receivers with excellent sideband separation and extremely high (kHz) spectral resolutions at the 5000m altitude Chajnantor site in northern Chile. This last aspect (spectral resolution) is the main improvement (by more than three orders of magnitude) in the presented data with respect to our previous work conducted ~20 years ago from Mauna Kea in Hawai'i. These new measurements have enabled us to identify slight modifications needed in the Atmospheric Transmission at Microwaves (ATM) model to better take into account minor constituent vertical profiles, include a few missing lines, and adjust some high-energy O_3_ line frequencies. After these updates, the ATM model is highly consistent with all data sets presented in this work (within ~2 % at 1GHz resolution).

Keywords
  1. earth-planet
  2. spectroscopy
Bibliographic source Bibcode
2022A&A...664A.153P
See also HTML
https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/A+A/664/A153
IVOA Identifier IVOID
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/A+A/664/A153
Document Object Identifer DOI
doi:10.26093/cds/vizier.36640153

Access

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History

2022-08-24T07:15:25Z
Resource record created
2022-08-24T07:15:25Z
Created
2022-08-29T10:15:55Z
Updated

Contact

Name
CDS support team
Postal Address
CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, 11 rue de l'Universite, F-67000 Strasbourg, France
E-Mail
cds-question@unistra.fr