Does anyone know how I can use a laser to measure the distance between the ground and a certain cloud? I know they make ceilometers but they are really pricey. Any ideas??
The concept is quite simple - they shine a puls of laser light onto the clouds, and a detector is pointed in the same direction. The time it takes to make the round trip is then measured and converted to distace (1 microsecond roundtrip ~ 1.5 metres).
What makes it expensive are obviously the optics required to pull that off. Perhaps its feasible to build something like this using 2 telescopes, though that might make it a pretty dangerous toy for air traffic