Lessons learned from the TMT site testing campaign

Abstract

After a site testing campaign spanning 5 sites over a period of 5 years, the site selection for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) culminated with the choice of Mauna Kea 13N in Hawaii. During the campaign, a lot practical lessons were learned by our team and these lessons can be shared with current and future site testing campaign done for other observatories. These lessons apply to the preselection of the site, the ground work and operations of the campaign as well as the analysis of the data. We present of selection of such lessons in this paper preceded by a short summary of the TMT site testing activities.