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... > Instruments > Earth Remote Sensing Instruments > Passive Remote Sensing > Spectrometers/Radiometers > Interferometers > WINDII

Preferred term

WINDII  

Definition

  • The Wind Imaging Interferometer (WINDII) on UARS determined temperature and winds in the mesosphere and the lower thermosphere by measuring both Doppler widths and shifts of isolated spectral lines emitted by airglow and aurora. The principal objectives were (1) measure 2-dimensional vertical profiles of horizontal wind velocity and Doppler temperature of the neutral atmosphere from 70 to 310 km as a function of latitude and time, (2) measure the global distribution of small-scale wave-like structures on a 3 km scale, and (3) studied the dynamic and thermal aspects of the neutral atmospheric energy balance. The WINDII instrument viewed the atmospheric limb simultaneously in two directions, 45 degrees and 135 degrees from the velocity vector. An imaging detector provided simultaneous measurements of temperature and wind profiles over the instrument's entire altitude range (70 to 310 km) with a vertical resolution of 2 km and horizontal resolution of 20 to 100 km. Emission lines of OI, OH, O+ and O2 were measured to cover both daytime and nighttime over the altitude range and provide thermospheric ion wind velocities. The instrument was basically a CCD camera which viewed the Earth's limb through a field-widened Michelson interferometer. The instrument took 4 images with the interferometer optical path difference changed by 1/4 wavelength between images. From these images, the fringe phase (leading to wind velocity), fringe modulation (leading to temperature), and emission rate was determined. The Michelson optics consisted of a cemented glass hexagonal beamsplitter, a glass block with a deposited mirror and a glass block combined with an air gap and a piezoelectrically driven mirror. The CCD camera consisted of a fast camera lens and a 320 x 256 pixel detector array cooled to -50 C. Interference filters were mounted in a temperature-controlled filter wheel assembly to isolate specific spectral lines. See Reber, Carl A.,"The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite",Trans., Am. Geophys. Union EOS, Vol. 71, No. 51, pp. 1867-1868,1873-1874,1878, December 18, 1990. Group: Instrument_Details Entry_ID: WINDII Group: Instrument_Identification Instrument_Category: Earth Remote Sensing Instruments Instrument_Class: Passive Remote Sensing Instrument_Type: Spectrometers/Radiometers Instrument_Subtype: Interferometers Short_Name: WINDII Long_Name: Wind Imaging Interferometer End_Group Group: Associated_Platforms Short_Name: UARS End_Group Online_Resource: http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/UARS/documents/windii Online_Resource: http://www.trentu.ca/academic/windii/ Creation_Date: 2016-01-08 End_Group (en)

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https://gcmd.earthdata.nasa.gov/kms/concept/070eb17a-33d1-4255-bc7a-e4168c8e9e56

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