ANAtOLIA (Atmospheric monitoring to Assess the availability of Optical Links through the Atmosphere) is a European Space Agency project aimed at selecting sites for optical communication in the atmosphere. The main monitored parameters are cloud cover, aerosol in relation to atmospheric turbulence aimed at monitoring and forecasting the influence of aerosol and cloud cover in reducing optical communication through the atmosphere in selected sites by ESA. In this work, a novel algorithm that uses both the Pearson correlation coefficient and Fourier analysis, is used to assess such influences. Aerosol and cloud cover data are obtained from ground stations and satellite over Calern (France), Catania (Italy), Cebreros (Spain) and Lisbon (Portugal). The novel algorithm provides a preliminary long-, medium- and short-term aerosol-cloud interaction for these four candidate sites, obtaining respectively the variability, the seasonal and hourly trend of the aerosol concentration; the main medium-term periodicities of aerosols as clouds precursors; the short-term correlation between morning-afternoon aerosol concentration. The use of aerosols as a precursor parameter of cloud cover through a Fourier analysis, makes the algorithm versatile and usable for all sites of optical communication and astronomical importance in which optical transparency is a fundamental requirement, and therefore it is a potential tool to be developed to implement forecasting models.
The propagation of light radiation in the atmosphere is a topic that needs to be properly analyzed to mitigate its negative influence on astronomical observation. This work describes a novel approach for evaluating atmospheric propagation of artificial light at night emphasizing (ALAN) the dependence on altitude and aerosols; it is based on an innovative experiment using a sounding balloon equipped with two sky quality meters (SQM): one vertically pointed at 30○ (SQM-V) and the other horizontally at 90○ (SQM-H) from the zenith. The system was launched during astronomical night condition from an area of the Italian Apennines with low ground light emission and crossed the Tuscan sky, observing the vertical and horizontal ALAN propagation. The data analysis of the two SQMs and their georeferentiation through altitude and trajectory reconstruction allows to model the propagation of light in the experiment field of view from few hundred meters up to an altitude of about 30 km. In this work main focus is given to the tropospheric part of atmosphere up to 12500 meters: the processed data is used to validate a theoretical model taking into account the altitude, the course of the balloon, the atmospheric composition and the population of the cities overflown by the balloon obtaining a correlation of 0.85 with the SQM-H and 0.91 with the SQM-V. The magnitude values close to 21.5 mag arcsec−2 measured by the SQM-V at 2000 meters are an important experimental result for evaluating the influence of the aerosols and the altitude on the ALAN propagation.
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