Photographic observations of Earth's airglow from space

Abstract

Observations of Earth’s airglow from a recent flight of the Space Shuttle have provided new information about emissions in the visible and near infrared portions of the optical spectrum. A new type of image intensifier camera system was carried aboard STS‐5, flown in November, 1982. This instrument, which included an objective ruled grating, provided a low resolution, spectrally dispersed image of the limb airglow layer. From the resulting spectra we can identify several characteristic airglow emissions. These include the 5577 Å emission of atomic oxygen, the OH Meinel bands, which appear as a continuum, and the atmospheric O2(O‐O) band of the transition. This latter feature, which is not seen in ground observations of night airglow due to self absorption by atmospheric oxygen, was the single brightest emission of Earth’s night airglow seen in the present observations. The 300 kR measured intensity of this emission seen at the limb agrees closely with previous rocket measurements.