Abstract

One of the limitations imposed on remote sensing of the atmosphere by airborne lidar to date has been two dimensionality. Most, if not all airborne lidars are restricted to the nadir, along-track plane. While these measurements are very useful for a number of applications, they obviously lack the ability to supply information in the across-track plane. The new Large Aperature Scanning Airborne Lidar (LASAL) system was designed to overcome this limitation. LASAL has the ability to scan 45 degrees left and right of nadir at rates of up to 90 degrees per second. This enables the three dimensional rendering of atmospheric aerosol structure below the plane. In addition, LASAL has the ability to track a volume of air along the flight path at any height below the plane. The data acquired in this manner can be used to compute attenuation in the region below the plane to the tracking height.

© 1991 Optical Society of America