ALIS - HIGHLIGHTS, STATUS, AND FUTURE PLANS

In this paper, scientific achievements, present status and future plans are presented. ALIS has been used to study a number of optical phenomena in the atmosphere including aurora, meteors and polar stratospheric clouds. ALIS made the first unambiguous observations of Radio-induced optical emissions at high latitudes and the first detection of water in a Leonid meteor trail. The present (2006) incarnation of ALIS consists of six stations, spaced about 50 km. Each station has a CCD imager with a six-position filter wheel equipped with narrow-band interference filters. The field-of- view is roughly half all-sky. A positioning system enables imaging from several sites with overlapping fields-of-view for any desired part of the sky thus making triangulation and tomography possible. The whole system can be remote controlled. Raw data from ALIS are freely available at http://alis.irf.se. Present work and future plans include studies in collaboration with the Japanese satellite Reimei for studies of auroral fine structures, collaboration with EISCAT and other ground-based instruments, and activities during the International Polar Year, IPY.