Atmospheric transmission at submillimetre wavelengths from Mauna Kea

Abstract

The submillimetre atmospheric transmission spectrum above Mauna Kea has been measured at a resolution of 0.005 cm−1 (150 MHz) with a Fourier transform spectrometer at the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, using the Sun as a source. Column abundances of O2, H2O and O3 determined from these spectra are found to be in excellent agreement with independent measurements. The derived column abundances have been used as inputs to the atmospheric spectral modelling program fascod. The synthetic transmission spectrum is found to be in excellent agreement with the measured spectrum, and provides a template for submillimetre observations from the JCMT.