Physics
Scientific paper
Dec 2006
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006agufmsa21a0222c&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2006, abstract #SA21A-0222
Physics
0310 Airglow And Aurora, 3332 Mesospheric Dynamics
Scientific paper
Flux calibrated high-resolution spectra of OH Meinel emissions in the night sky over the spectral range of 314 - 1054 nm are obtained from the ESI spectrograph on the Keck II telescope at Mauna Kea and from the UVES spectrograph on the VLT (Kueyen) telescope at Cerro Paranal. The ESI spectra, with a resolution of 6000, provide near-continuous coverage of the night sky over the course of 10 nights during March and October, 2000. The UVES spectra provide a much higher resolution of 50000, but are coadded over several nights to yield time-averaged intensities. We have recently described a number of aspects of these spectra as they relate to the spectroscopy and chemistry of OH in the mesosphere.(1) Here we consider in more detail the temporal variations in the OH rovibrational populations. The intensity calibrated spectra demonstrate that the ratio of emitting populations in OH high vibrational levels (v = 9) to those in low vibrational levels (v = 3) can vary by a factor of three over the course of a night. A comparable variation is also observed in the ratio of the emitting populations in high rotational levels (J > 8.5) to those in low rotational levels (J < 4.5) during the same period. The strong correlation (R = 0.98) between the vibrational and rotational populations will be compared with current models of OH radiative and collisional processes in the mesosphere. This work was partially supported by NSF grant ATM-0139344. (1) P. C. Cosby and T. G. Slanger, Can. J. Phys. (accepted for publication).
Cosby Philip C.
Slanger Tom G.
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