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Updated: Nov 10, 2025
Simultaneous Measurement of Turbulence and Particle Kinematics Using Flow Imaging Techniques
Published on: March 12, 2019
The PMC Turbo Balloon Mission to Measure Gravity Waves and Turbulence in Polar Mesospheric Clouds: Camera, Telemetry,
Carl Bjorn Kjellstrand1, Glenn Jones2, Christopher Geach3
1Department of Physics, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
Abstract:
The Polar Mesospheric Cloud Turbulence (PMC Turbo) instrument consists of a balloon-borne platform which hosts seven cameras and a Rayleigh lidar. During a 6-day flight in July 2018, the cameras captured images of Polar Mesospheric Clouds (PMCs) with a sensitivity to spatial scales from ~20 m to 100 km at a ~2-s cadence and a full field of view (FOV) of hundreds of kilometers. We developed software optimized for imaging of PMCs, controlling multiple independent cameras, compressing and storing images, and for choosing telemetry communication channels. We give an overview of the PMC Turbo design focusing on the flight software and telemetry functions. We describe the performance of the system during its first flight in July 2018.
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