Visualising the Virtually Unobservable

Optical Surfaces has supplied key reference testing optics for the High Resolution Dynamics Limb Sounder (HIRDLS) Instrument to the University of Oxford, UK. For many years, the university has been a leading international research centre and developer of satellite instruments in the fields of atmospheric, oceanic and planetary physics. As a joint collaboration between companies in the USA and the UK, HIRDLS is an advanced instrument that is due to fly
on NASA's Earth Observing System satellite called AURA
around the spring of 2004. It will measure stratospheric and
mesopheric temperature and composition at unprecedented
high spatial resolution, revealing processes that are virtually
unobservable by current satellite instruments.