The Purple Crow Lidar is considered to be a powerful laser radar (lidar) that emits pulses of light. The light brightness of this laser is equal to having 1 million 75 W light bulbs on. Such bright light scatters off air molecules, and its reflection gets collected by a large telescope.
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Telescope
The telescope is formed by rotating liquid mercury at 10 r.p.m. in a 2.65-m diameter container. This liquid mirror technology has been made and developed at Université Laval in Québec City. Such rotating measurement allow air density, pressure, temperature and composition to be measured. Which can be useful to collect data for global warming and weather prediction.
Weather prediction
This chart is used to determine and predict the weather in Purple Crow Lidar Facility in London Ontario for astronomical observing.
Location
The Purple Crow operates from the Echo Base Observatory located at Western's Environmental Science Field Station located near London, Ontario, Canada.
People in charge
The Purple Crow Lidar research project is headed by Professor Robert J. Sica in Physics Department at the UWO London Ontario, and students (primarily graduate students), can help and participate in astronmical research. Its main support comes from the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).