Detection of wind velocities from scintillation images

SCIDAR (SCIntillation Detection And Ranging) has been used at various sites around the world to characterise turbulence strength. However little focus has been given to finding average wind velocity, V (h), from SCIDAR data. Current methods rely on the detection of full spatio-temporal covariance profiles, containing a triplet pattern associated with each turbulent layer present. A new technique for finding V (h) from noisy scintillation covariance images using a modified CLEAN algorithm has been developed to handle partial spatio-temporal covariance profiles. The application of the new algorithm to data collected from Mount John University Observatory is demonstrated.