Abstract

The use of a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera together with a Fabry-Perot etalon (FP) to measure neutral winds in the thermosphere using 630 nm airglow has been proposed by Hays [1990]. In principle, the same technique is used for lidar winds with the sole difference being that a lidar provides its own light source, whereas airglow relies on a naturally occurring emission in the atmosphere. Hays [1990] showed that a CCD array detector attached to an etalon has more than an order of magnitude higher sensitivity than a photomultiplier tube (PMT). Particular advantages of using a CCD are: (1) It can record the whole fringe pattern at once, thus retaining the photons from multiple rings. (2) Because the FP etalon is not scanned, drifting of the location of the fringe pattern is eliminated. (3) The CCD has higher sensitivity to red light than a PMT. This paper is a report on the usefulness of a CCD array to record the fringes from a Doppler-Rayleigh lidar Fabry-Perot etalon for measuring winds and to compare the obtained results with those obtained using a scanning etalon and a PMT.

© 1993 Optical Society of America