Starphotometry seeks to provide accurate measures of nocturnal optical depth (OD). It is driven by a need to characterize aerosols and their radiative forcing effects during a very data-sparse period. A sub-0.01 OD error is required to adequately characterize key aerosol parameters. We found approaches for sufficiently mitigating errors to achieve the 0.01 standard. This renders starphotometry the equal of daytime techniques and opens the door to exploiting its distinct star-pointing advantages.
Starphotometry seeks to provide accurate measures of nocturnal optical depth (OD). It is driven...