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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.