Cyclope (Southern Hemisphere)

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, the DIMM method is mostly used by professional observatories in order to measure atmospheric seeing (or turbulence) and allowing to optimize targets and observation programs.
Nevertheless, DIMM method requires a telescope with enough focal length (>3000mm) and enough aperture (>250mm), and to track bright stars the whole night. This is quite stringent and can be a quite costly approach. The telescope needs a shelter, and automatically jump from a star to another.

ALCOR-SYSTEM provides a method to overcome some of the drawbacks of the DIMM system.

In the northern hemisphere, a bright star called "Polaris" that does not move so much in the sky and is bright enough.

The fixed seeing monitor uses the Polaris star, and ALCOR-SYSTEM is proud to present this new product : CYCLOPE seeing monitor

Update Dec 2020 : A South hemisphere version has been tested in Chile (LAT : S23°) and is working smoothly. Alcor-System is about to release a product for southern hemisphere users. Please contact us for more information.