Passive and active EO sensing close to the sea surface

The present paper investigates the use of an eye-safe laser rangefinder at 1.5 μm and TV/IR imaging to obtain information on atmospheric properties at various paths close to the sea surface. On one day active/passive imaging NIR and SWIR systems were also used. The paper will describe the experimental equipment and the results from measurements of atmospheric backscatter as well as TV and IR images of test targets along a 1.8 km path close to the Baltic Sea. The site also contained a weather station and a scintillometer for logging weather and turbulence parameters. Results correlating the lidar attenuation with the imaging performance will be given and compared with models.

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