[Geysers] Remote thermal detection (Was: Lone Star)

[Davis, Brian L.]

> Lone Star might be an ideal candidate for a study using an infrared "game scouting" camera.

I'm curious if anyone has ever taken a look at non-contact IR thermometers for geyser (eruption) detection. I'm not sure how well they could "see" through the high humidity... but I would think they might be ideal for "watching" for a temperature rise in thermal channels or on the surface of a geyser cone. Calibrated, they could even perhaps detect thermal cycling of surface pools. As sensors go they don't seem unreasonably expensive, and have the advantage of being completely removed from the geyser in question. Pairing such an IR sensor with a simple datalogger could be a handy method to do this, much smaller than a camera. Heck, while we're at it, I wonder if a simple commercial PIR sensor could do it (with a suitable field of view). Any thoughts? Has this been tried?

-- 
Brian Davis