Measuring the detector-observed impact of optical blurring due to aerosols in a laboratory cloud chamber

Corey D. Packard; Raymond A. Shaw; Will H. Cantrell; Greg M. Kinney; Michael C. Roggemann; John R. Valenzuela

doi:10.1117/1.JRS.12.042404

5 July 2018 Measuring the detector-observed impact of optical blurring due to aerosols in a laboratory cloud chamber

Corey D. Packard, Raymond A. Shaw, Will H. Cantrell, Greg M. Kinney, Michael C. Roggemann, John R. Valenzuela

Author Affiliations +

Journal of Applied Remote Sensing, Vol. 12, Issue 4, 042404 (July 2018). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JRS.12.042404

Abstract

Deleterious effects of the atmosphere on remotely acquired images includes absorption and scattering of light by aerosol particulates, which not only attenuates the signal but can potentially cause blurring due to forward-scattered light accepted by the imaging system. Proposed aerosol scattering models (e.g., Ishimaru) provide a method for simulating the contrast and spatial detail expected when imaging through atmospheres with significant aerosol optical depth. This work explores closure between modulation transfer functions (MTFs) obtained from directly measured images and MTFs calculated from theory using measured cloud properties. The closure experiments are performed in a laboratory cloud chamber in which cloud droplet number density and size distribution are directly measured. Images of a binary knife-edge target were taken with an optical detector on the other side of a water cloud generated through reduction of pressure in the humidified chamber. The key results of this closure experiment are: the theoretical expression for the aerosol MTF is likely overly simplistic and does not account for broad particle size distributions. The significance of optical blurring from light scattering by aerosol particles depends sensitively on the properties of both the particles and the imaging system.

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Corey D. Packard, Raymond A. Shaw, Will H. Cantrell, Greg M. Kinney, Michael C. Roggemann, and John R. Valenzuela "Measuring the detector-observed impact of optical blurring due to aerosols in a laboratory cloud chamber," Journal of Applied Remote Sensing 12(4), 042404 (5 July 2018). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JRS.12.042404

Received: 7 April 2018; Accepted: 5 June 2018; Published: 5 July 2018

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