Free-surface phenomena under low- and zero-gravity conditions

A free surface experiment using a liquid doped with a fluorescent dye under sheet illumination is summarized. The work includes the selection of a CCD camera for use during the design stages of the experiment as well as a preliminary demonstration of this technique in the production of a contour map of a liquid-liquid interface with better than 0.1 mm resolution. With a different data sampling and storage procedure, the image processing is reduced to a simple thresholding procedure which can be done in hardware.