Memorie

• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Automatic Weather Stations (AWS). At; Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.71.9743; http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~mgb/Antbib/capri_dempsey.pdf

Abstract. COBBER (ClOud OBservER), is a mid-infrared sky monitor featuring a 10µm Perkin-Elmer TPS534 thermopile detector. Radiation is focussed on to the detector through an anti-reflection coated, hemispherical ZnSe lens, providing a 30 ◦ field of view on the sky. At 10cm in length and 4cm diameter, the tiny cloud monitor was designed for ease of transportation and an extremely low power budget. Run in conjunction with ICECAM, it uses power supplied by lithium thionyl chloride (LiSOCl2) batteries. COBBER is powered up by the ICECAM system once every two hours, sending its data to Sydney via the ARGOS satellite link. The instrument was installed at Dome C in January of 2003, and has been collecting data continuously from this date. In over 70 observing days, only four days of cloud have been recorded, results which have been confirmed by a webcamera installed at Dome C as part of the AASTINO project. Key words. site testing – Antarctic astronomy – cloud monitoring 1.