Turbulence (or seeing) is a great concern when recording images of the sky, because this is jeopardizing astronomical telescope resolution. Recording images during best seeing is really a big advantage, to do so, continuous seeing measurement is required to optimize image recording time. To get seeing measurements during the day can be challenging since no star can be used. The idea of this product is to measure the Sun scintillation and compute seeing figure equivalent.
The goal of this product is to measure atmospheric seeing condition in a continuous fashion, so this setup stays outdoor all the time 24h a day, and use SUN light and its scintillation. Clear sky without clouds is required.
The CSSMS is a totally sealed system that can overcome all extreme weather conditions, and is not sensitive to wind gust due to its strong design. The software starts measurements automatically when the Sun is above the horizon and clear sky.
This system offers watertight connectors, for continuous outdoor operation and is made of high quality alloy colorless anodized aluminum. A photodiode and a green filter 550nm, and very accurate and fast 16 bits ADC performs SUN scintillation measurements and outputs seeing figure expressed in arcsec (or Fried's Ro).
The link to the computer is USB - HID type (no COM emulation) and offers very reliable data link. The software runs into a PC Windows 10 platform, displays and save seeing recorded data with the course of the time.
