SPATIALLY RESOLVED AEROSOL DETECTION

The invention pertains to an aerosol detector system for spatially resolved detection of an aerosol distribution in an area, comprising: a wide field polarization preserving telescope having telecentric imaging optics for imaging the earth surface onto a detector; said detector receiving phase stepped images imaged by said telescope; and a controller coupled to the detector, arranged to provide a resulting image as a function of corresponding pixel values of the multiple images to produce an image at a spatially resolved polarization state corresponding to said aerosol substance; wherein the telescope comprises a first telecentric imaging lens group and a wavelength filter positioned in a field image of the first telescope telecentric beam to define a spectral range of interest; the telescope further comprising: a converging lens group converging the beam to a pupil stop; relay optics including a second telecentric imaging lens group arranged to generate a telecentric beam; and splitter optics, comprising a polarization splitter for the selected wavelength range to split the telecentric beam into polarized beams; a further splitter; and a retarder to create multiple phase stepped images at different polarizations, the detector comprising multiple image sensors positioned in imaging planes after the splitter optics, and said polarization splitter, further splitter and retarder positioned in the telecentric beam of the second telecentric imaging lens group.