Magnetic ordering of the polar airglow

Abstract

The visible airglow experiment on the Atmosphere Explorer-C satellite has gathered sufficient data over the Earth's polar regions to allow one to map the geographic distribution of particle precipitation using emissions at 3371 and 5200 Å. Both of these features exhibit large variations in space and time. The 3371 Å emission of N 2( C 3 π), excited by low energy electrons, indicates substantial energy inputs on the dayside in the vicinity of the polar cusp. More precipitation occurs in the morning than evening for the sample reported here, while the entire night sector between magnetic latitudes 65° and 77.5° is subjected to particle fluxes. Regions of enhanced 5200 Å emission from N( 2D) are larger in horizontal extent than those at 3371 Å. This smearing effect is due to ionospheric motions induced by magnetospheric convection.