ORFEUS II Far-Ultraviolet Observations of the Lunar Atmosphere

Details ORFEUS II Far-Ultraviolet Observations of the Lunar Atmosphere ORFEUS II Far-Ultraviolet Observations of the Lunar Atmosphere

Jun 1998

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1998apj...500l..71f&link_type=abstract

Astrophysical Journal Letters v.500, p.L71

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

6

Moon

Scientific paper

In 1996 November and December, remote FUV observations of the lunar atmosphere were conducted using the Berkeley spectrograph aboard the ORFEUS-SPAS II satellite. The main goal of the observations was to measure the distribution of Ar above the lunar dayside for the first time and to search for another predicted atmospheric constituent, Ne. During a 33 minute observation, the 20" diameter spectrograph aperture was scanned repeatedly across the lunar dayside limb to obtain data over the range +/-90" from the lunar limb. The data reveal a 3 sigma emission feature at 1048.2 A, which is interpreted as resonance scattering from lunar atmospheric Ar. The detected emission level of 1.3+/-0.4x10^{-3} photons cm-2 s-1 yields a daytime atmospheric abundance at the surface of 8+/-3x105 cm-3, assuming a spherically symmetric exospheric distribution. A search for atmospheric Ne I 736 A emission resulted in a 2 sigma upper limit of 6x10^{-4} photons cm-2 s-1 or a daytime surface density upper limit of 2x106 cm-3.

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