Observations of the far ultraviolet airglow by the Ultraviolet Limb Imaging experiment on STS-39

Details Observations of the far ultraviolet airglow by the Ultraviolet Limb Imaging experiment on STS-39 Observations of the far ultraviolet airglow by the Ultraviolet Limb Imaging experiment on STS-39

Dec 1994

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1994jgr....9923275b&link_type=abstract

Journal of Geophysical Research, Volume 99, Issue A12, p. 23275-23288

Other

14

Atmospheric Composition And Structure: Airglow And Aurora, Atmospheric Composition And Structure: Thermosphere-Composition And Chemistry, Atmospheric Composition And Structure: Instruments And Techniques, Ionosphere: Instruments And Techniques

Scientific paper

The Ultraviolet Limb Imaging (UVLIM) experiment flew on STS-39 in the spring of 1991 to observe the Earth's thermospheric airglow and included a far ultraviolet (1080-1800 Å) spectrometer. We present first results from this spectrometer, including a spectroscopic analysis at 6-Å resolution of H, O, N, and N2 dayglow emissions and modeling of the observed limb-scan profiles of dayglow emissions. The observed N2 Lyman-Birge-Hopfield (LBH) emission reflects a vibrational population distribution in the a1IIg state that differs significantly from those predicted for a direct electron excitation and excitation with cascade from the a' 1∑-u and w1Δu states. The vibrational population distribution and LBH brightness suggest a total cascade rate 45% that of direct excitation, in contrast to laboratory measurements. For the first time, pronounced limb brightening is observed in both the NIλ1135 and NIλ1200 limb emission profiles, as expected for emissions excited by N2 dissociation which produces kinetically fast N fragments; however, optically thick components of these features are also observed. Preliminary modeling of the OIλ1356, HIλ1216, and OIλ1304 and OIλ1641 emissions agrees to within roughly 10% of the observed limb-scan profiles, but the models underestimate the N2 LBH profiles by a factor of 1.4-1.6, consistent with the inferred cascade effect. Other findings include: an OIλ1152/λ1356 intensity ratio that is inconsistent with the large cascade contribution to OIλ1356 from np 5P states required by laboratory and nightglow observations; nightglow observations of the tropical ultraviolet arcs exhibit a wide range of OIλ1356/ɛ1304 intensity ratios and illustrate the complicated observing geometry and radiative transfer effects that must be modeled; and we find a 3-σ upper limit of 8.5 R to the total LBH vehicle glow emission.

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