All Sky Camera, LIDAR and Electric Field Meter: Auxiliary instruments for the ASTRI SST-2M prototype

Abstract

ASTRI SST-2M is the end-to-end prototype telescope of the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics, INAF, designed to investigate the 10-100 TeV band in the framework of the Cherenkov Telescope Array, CTA. The ASTRI SST-2M telescope has been installed in Italy in September 2014, at the INAF observing station located at Serra La Nave on Mount Etna. The telescope is foreseen to be completed and fully operative in spring 2015 including auxiliary instrumentation needed to support both operations and data analysis. In this contribution we present the current status of a sub-set of the auxiliary instruments that are being used at the Serra La Nave site, namely an All Sky Camera, an Electric Field Meter and a Raman Lidar devoted, together with further instrumentation, to the monitoring of the atmospheric and environmental conditions. The data analysis techniques under development for these instruments could be applied at the CTA sites, where similar auxiliary instrumentation will be installed. <P />