Evaluation of night-time aerosols measurements and lunar irradiance models in the frame of the first multi-instrument nocturnal intercomparison campaign

No evidence of significant differences with the Moon's phase angle was found when comparing raw signals of the six Cimel photometers involved in this field campaign.

The first multi-instrument nocturnal aerosol optical depth (AOD) intercomparison campaign was held at the high-mountain Izafia Observatory (Tenerife, Spain) in June 2017, involving 2-min synchronous measurements from two different types of lunar photometers (Cimel CE318-T and Moon Precision Filter Radiometer, LunarPFR) and one stellar photometer. The Robotic Lunar Observatory (ROLO) model developed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) was compared with the open-access ROLO Implementation for Moon photometry Observation (RIMO) model. Results showed rather small differences at Izatia over a 2-month time period covering June and July, 2017 (+/- 0.01 in terms of AOD calculated by means of a day/night/day coherence test analysis and +/- 2% in terms of lunar irradiance). The RIMO model has been used in this field campaign to retrieve AOD from lunar photometric measurements.