ISSN : 2583-939X
Since 1986 I was
co-leader of site testing scientific Group in our Institute. This team has
considerable experience in site testing studies. In 1986-1988 they participated
in the site survey program for the IRIS (International Research on the Interior
of the Sun) spectrophotometer. As a result, Kumbel Mountain in Uzbekistan was
found to be one of the best of the IRIS network sites (Bayjumanov et al 1991;
Ilyasov et al 1992). The team also built a photometer for atmospheric
transparency measurements which provided useful information about the sky
conditions at Kumbel (Ilyasov, Sultanov & Egamberdiev 1993; Ilyasov &
Egamberdiev, 1994).
Since 1996 our team has
performed seeing monitoring, investigated the influence of meteorological
conditions on seeing, monitored the scintillation and taken other measurements
at Maidanak. Maidanak
Observatory (66°56' E, 38°41' N) is located at the
south-east of the Republic of Uzbekistan. It lies on the spurs of the Pamir
Alai mountain system at 2300 m above sea level. This summit was selected for
astronomical observations in the late 60-s a result of a ten-year long site
assessment campaign organized at the Ulugh Beg Astronomical Institute (UBAI) of
the Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences and Sternberg Astronomical Institute of
Moscow State University. The studies of the Mt. Maidanak astroclimate continued
through the 80-s and up to the beginning of the 90-s by several groups of
researchers using different methods and instruments. But those groups give
different values of seeing due to the limitation of the methods and systematic
errors of the instruments used.
Seeing measurements with
a Differential Image Motion Monitor (DIMM), designed by the European Southern
Observatory (ESO) and used to estimate the seeing at the La Silla and Paranal
Observatories in Chile have been carrying out at Mt. Maidanak since August
1996. The median value of the seeing at Mt. Maidanak for the last three years
of observations is 0.69 arcsec. (Ilyasov et al 1999). For the La Silla and
Paranal Observatories, the value of this parameter are 0.87 and 0.66 arcsec,
respectively. It is indicated that Mt. Maidanak is one of the most favourable
site for astronomical observations.
When the high-quality
atmospheric conditions of Mt. Maidanak were established with a modern
instrumentation, the next step was to measure other atmospheric parameters
relevant to adaptive optics and interferometry, such as wave front outer scale,
isoplanatic angle, high altitude wind. In July 1998 during a site testing
campaign, supported by INTAS-096-37 grant, all these parameters were measured
with the Generalized Seeing Monitor (GSM) developed at the University of Nice.
Comparison
of the all these atmospheric parameters of Mt. Maidanak (Ehgamberdiev et. al.,
2000) with ones at other well known observatories show that Mt. Maidanak is a
favorable site for future installation of an extremely large telescopes. Exceptional
features of Mt. Maidanak are very low wind speed and geographical location in
the middle between two international astronomical facilities at Canaries and
Hawaii.
Since
2004 we began seeing measurements wits DIMM at Samarkand and Parkent sites in order
to estimate atmospheric conditions of these sites for establishing new educational
astronomical observatories. Four years’ observations of atmosphere parameters show
that the average value of seeing at these sites is much better with compare to
that at other famous educational observatories in Russia and Ukraine. Due to this
fact we have decided to build educational observatory at the territory of
Botanical Garden of Samarkand State University. The constructing works of
telescope dome and telescope installing were finished in March 2005. Since this
time we have started to make educational observations.
Since 2015, we have begun to measure
atmospheric absorption on the Suffa Plateau using the MIAP-2 radiometer at
radio wavelengths of 2 and 3 mm. Multiline data on atmospheric parameters have
been obtained. As a result of the research, it turned out that the atmospheric
conditions of the Suffa plateau are suitable for observing celestial objects in
the submillimeter range.