  We present optical Thomson scattering measurements of electron density and
temperature in a large-scale (~2 cm) exploding laser plasma produced by
irradiating a solid target with a high energy (5-10 J) laser pulse at high
repetition rate (1 Hz). The Thomson scattering diagnostic matches this high
repetition rate. Unlike previous work performed in single shots at much higher
energies, the instrument allows point measurements anywhere inside the plasma
by automatically translating the scattering volume using motorized stages as
the experiment is repeated at 1 Hz. Measured densities around 4$\times 10^{16}$
cm$^{-3}$ and temperatures around 7 eV result in a scattering parameter near
unity, depending on the distance from the target. The measured spectra show the
transition from collective scattering close to the target to non-collective
scattering at larger distances. Densities obtained by fitting the weakly
collective spectra agree to within 10% with an irradiance calibration performed
via Raman scattering in nitrogen.
