Sodium layer monitoring

Gemini, NOAO and Imperial College(London) will collaborate  in a campaign to measure the altitude, thickness and strength of the Sodium layer, and the variations in these quantities. The campaign will take place at CTIO, using the 0.9 meter telescope, in five 7-10  night runs over one year, bright time in Febuary, May, September, ad November in 2001 and Febuary in 2002.The effort will be led by Celine d'Orgeville a laser systems engineer  from Gemeni. CTIO personal that will be involved in this project are Brooke Gregory, Andrei Tokovonin and Maxime Boccas, with support from Telops.The experimental setup will be exactly the same as that used by the Imperial College group at La Palma, details of which can be found at: http://op.ph.ic.ac.uk/jkt_lgs