Measurement of two-dimensional Doppler wind fields using a field widened Michelson interferometer.

An implementation of the field widened Michelson concept has been applied to obtain high resolution two-dimensional (2D) images of low velocity (<50 m/s) Doppler wind fields in the lab. Procedures and techniques have been developed that allow Doppler wind and irradiance measurements to be determined on a bin by bin basis with an accuracy of less than 2.5 m/s from CCD images over the observed field of view. The interferometer scanning mirror position is controlled to subangstrom precision with subnanometer repeatability using the multi-application low-voltage piezoelectric instrument control electronics developed by COM DEV Ltd.; it is the first implementation of this system as a phase stepping Michelson. In this paper the calibration and characterization of the Doppler imaging system is described and the planned implementation of this new technique for imaging 2D wind and irradiance fields using the earth's airglow is introduced. Observations of Doppler winds produced by a rotating wheel are reported and shown to be of sufficient precision for buoyancy wave observations in airglow in the mesopause region of the terrestrial atmosphere.