HR: 0800h
AN: SA21A-0340    [Abstracts]
TI: Nightglow Spectral Lines: The HIRES and UVES Database
AU: * Slanger, T G
EM: tom.slanger@sri.com
AF: Molecular Physics Laboratory SRI International, 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 United States
AU: Huestis, D L
EM: david.huestis@sri.com
AF: Molecular Physics Laboratory SRI International, 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 United States
AU: Sharpee, B D
EM: brian.sharpee@sri.com
AF: Molecular Physics Laboratory SRI International, 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 United States
AU: Cosby, P C
EM: philip.cosby@sri.com
AF: Molecular Physics Laboratory SRI International, 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 United States
AB: The terrestrial nightglow, from the ozone cut-off near 310 nm to the optical IR limit near 1050 nm, contains several thousand emission lines. A high-resolution atlas of 2800 lines has recently been published,[\textit{Hanuschik}, 2003] collected with the UVES echelle spectrograph on the VLT Kueyen 8 m telescope at the European Southern Observatory Paranal site in Chile. No attempt was made to assign the lines. Using similar data from the HIRES echelle spectrograph on the Keck I telescope, we have assigned most of the lines appearing in the UVES atlas. In this presentation we compare the quality of the UVES and HIRES data, finding them to be comparable at wavelengths longer than 340 nm, with better data from UVES below that wavelength. The line positions compare very well, with average deviations in the UV on the order of 0.0007 nm. The new O$_2$(\textit{c}$^1\Sigma_u^-$--\textit{b}$^1\Sigma_g^+$) emission system,[\textit{Slanger et al.}, 2003] is prominent in both sets of spectra, and we demonstrate that many of its lines were measured almost half a century ago.[\textit{Chamberlain}, 1958] This work was supported by NSF Aeronomy and NSF Astronomy Chamberlain, J.W., The Blue Airglow Spectrum, \textit{Astrophys. J. 128}, 713--717, 1958. Hanuschik, R.W., A Flux-Calibrated High-Resolution Atlas of Optical Sky Emission from UVES, \textit{Astron. Astrophys. 407}, 1157--1164, 2003. Slanger, T.G., P.C. Cosby, and D.L. Huestis, A New O$_2$ Band System: The \textit{c}$^1\Sigma_u^-$--\textit{b}$^1\Sigma_g^+$ Transition in the Terrestrial Nightglow, \textit{J. Geophys. Res. 108} (A2), 1089, 2003.
DE: 2415 Equatorial ionosphere
DE: 0310 Airglow and aurora
DE: 0360 Transmission and scattering of radiation
SC: SPA-Aeronomy [SA]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting