Gas Camera

The Resonance GCSO2-3 is a UV-sensitive camera that compares images in two spectral bands to produce concentration maps of SO2 plumes.  This method is based on differential optical absorption spectroscopy (DOAS) methodology for remote sensing of atmospheric gases (Refs 1-12).  GCSO2-3 has been under development since 2008 and the GC-SO2-3 is an elegant implementation of the method that has several unique features.

The gas camera employs a single back-thinned CMOS camera, which simultaneously captures two images of the target plume in bands centered on 310 and 320 nm. Offsets due to changes between two imaging chips or moving filters are eliminated.  The two images are mirrored about the optical axis of the camera, which eliminates distortion and edge dimming.  Modeling and measurements show that the concentration maps from GCSO2-3 are highly specific to SO2 and are insensitive to changes in the spectrum of daylight due to solar elevation.

The latest gas camera GCSO2-3 has been re-designed to reduce weight and size for greater portability in the field. To achieve this we modified the optical design and externalized the calibration to reduce mass and size. These changes allows us to utilize the GCSO2-3 gas camera on an aerial platform such as quad/octo-copter drones.