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A CCD Camera Lidar system called the CLidar system images a vertically pointing laser from the side with a spatially separated CCD camera and wide angle optics. The system has been used to investigate case studies of aerosols in mountain boundary layers in in the times following sunset. The aerosols detected by the system demonstrate the wide variation of near ground aerosol structure and capabilities of the CLidar system.

CLidar or camera lidar is a simple, inexpensive technique to measure nighttime tropospheric aerosol profiles. Stars in the raw data images used in the CLidar analysis can also be used to calculate aerosol optical depth simultaneously. A single star can be used with the Langley method or multiple star pairs can be used to reduce the error. The estimated error from data taken under clear sky conditions at Mauna Loa Observatory is approximately +/- 0.01.

In these proceedings we give a status update of the Calan-Hertfordshire Extrasolar Planet Search, an international collaboration led from Chile that aims to discover more planets around super metal-rich and Sun-like stars, and then follow these up with precision photometry to hunt for new bright transit planets. We highlight some results from this program, including exoplanet and brown dwarf discoveries, and a possible correlation between metallicity and planetary minimum mass at the lowest planetary masses detectable. Finally we discuss the short-term and long-term future pathways this program can take.

With time-series spectroscopic observations taken with the Near Infrared Spectrometer (NIRSPEC) at Keck II, we investigated the atmosphere of the close orbiting transiting extrasolar giant planet, HD 189733b. In paticular, we intended to measure the dense absorption line forest around 2.3 micron, which is produced by carbon monoxide (CO). CO is expected to be present in the planetary atmosphere, although no detection of this molecule has been claimed yet. We analyzed the NIRSPEC data with cross-correlation and detect CO absorption in the day-side spectrum of HD 189733b at the known planetary radial velocity semi-amplitude with 99.54% (2.8σ) confidence.