Identifying Clouds over the Pierre Auger Observatory using Infrared Satellite Data

Abstract

We describe a new method of identifying night-time clouds over the Pierre Auger Observatory using infrared data from the Imager instruments on the GOES-12 and GOES-13 satellites. We compare cloud identifications resulting from our method to those obtained by the Central Laser Facility of the Auger Observatory. Using our new method we can now develop cloud probability maps for the 3000 km^2 of the Pierre Auger Observatory twice per hour with a spatial resolution of ~2.4 km by ~5.5 km. Our method could also be applied to monitor cloud cover for other ground-based observatories and for space-based observatories.

References in corpus (7)

• Measurement of the Depth of Maximum of Extensive Air Showers above 10^18 eV
• Measurement of the energy spectrum of cosmic rays above 10^18 eV using the Pierre Auger Observatory
• The Fluorescence Detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory
• The Offline Software Framework of the Pierre Auger Observatory
• The Surface Detector System of the Pierre Auger Observatory
• A Study of the Effect of Molecular and Aerosol Conditions in the Atmosphere on Air Fluorescence Measurements at the Pierre Auger Observatory
• The Lidar System of the Pierre Auger Observatory

Cited by in corpus (5)

• The Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory
• Depth of Maximum of Air-Shower Profiles at the Pierre Auger Observatory: Measurements at Energies above 10^17.8 eV
• A search for photons with energies above $2\times 10^{17}$ eV using hybrid data from the low-energy extensions of the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Atmospheric effects in astroparticle physics experiments and the challenge of ever greater precision in measurements
• Atmospheric aerosol attenuation effect on FD data analysis at the Pierre Auger Observatory