Readers intimately familiar with Mie scattering may ask themselves: ‘Why does the LISST-100X only capture the first two lobes?”  The reason for this is that the LISST-100X ring detectors become logarithmically broader as the scattering angle increases.  As a consequence they do not capture the higher oscillations of Mie theory, as the oscillations occur over an angle range that is smaller than the scattering angles covered by the detectors.  The reason for this detector design was driven by inversion algorithms for recovering size distribution – a feature of logarithmic spaced detectors is that they capture the first two main scattering lobes for any size particles within the instrument measurement range. The LISST-100X is suitable for measuring the phase function when the underlying particle populations are poly-disperse, as is mostly the case in the aquatic environment.