Development of a Portable SLODAR Turbulence Profiler

We report on the development of a prototype portable monitor for profiling of the altitude and velocity of atmospheric optical turbulence. The instrument is based on the SLODAR Shack-Hartmann wave-front sensing technique, applied to a portable telescope and employing an electron-multiplication (EM) CCD camera as the wave-front sensor detector. Constructed for ESO by the astronomical instrumentation group at the University of Durham, the main applications of the monitor will be in support of the ESO multi-conjugate adaptive optics demonstrator (MAD) project, and for site characterization surveys for future extremely large telescopes. The monitor can profile the whole atmosphere or can be optimized for profiling of low altitude (0-1km) turbulence, with a maximum altitude resolution of approximately 150m. First tests of the system have been carried out at the La Palma observatory.