Observations of the Lunar Atmosphere During the Total Eclipse of 4 April 1996.

Details Observations of the Lunar Atmosphere During the Total Eclipse of 4 April 1996. Observations of the Lunar Atmosphere During the Total Eclipse of 4 April 1996.

Sep 1996

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1996dps....28.1710m&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #28, #17.10; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 28, p.1123

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Scientific paper

Eclipses of the Moon provide a rare opportunity to conduct low-light-level observations of the lunar atmosphere under conditions of minimal scattered moonlight. The eclipse of 3-4 April 1996 provided such an opportunity during the totality phase from 23:27 to 00:53 UT. We report on preliminary results obtained from the site of Italy's new Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) on La Palma in the the Canary Islands. An 7.5 deg field of view (FOV) imaging system equipped with a coronograph-type occulting mask to prevent residual disk illumination during totality from entering the CCD detector was used to obtain images in the sodium D1+D2 lines. A companion imaging spectrograph with a slit spanning the same portion of sky was used to search for non-sodium species over the spectral range 4000-8000 Angstroms, with a resolution of 12 Angstroms. The 2-dimensional imaging results indicate a symmetrical coma of Na extending beyond our FOV of +/- 7.5 lunar radii (Rm). The D1+D2 brightness at 3 Rm (just beyond the penumbra) was 30 Rayleighs. The imaging spectrograph revealed no other lines of lunar origin at this distance. These preliminary results confirm our previous observations of a very large Na coma at the time of full Moon (when the lunar surface is shielded from solar wind bombardment as a possible sputtering agent). In addition, we agree with the published findings of Flynn and Stern (from earlier observations much closer to the limb) that the presence of other atmospheric constituents awaits detection at visible brightness levels less than 5% those of sodium.

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