Airglow - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

12/21/15, 13:13

Airglow
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Airglow (also called nightglow) is a faint emission of light by a

planetary atmosphere. In the case of Earth's atmosphere, this optical
phenomenon causes the night sky never to be completely dark, even
after the effects of starlight and diffused sunlight from the far side are
removed.
Airglow over the VLT platform.[1]

Contents
1 Development
2 Description
3 Calculation of the effects of airglow
4 Induced airglow
5 Experimental observation

A time-lapse taken on Cerro Paranal

of the VLT. Faint airglow lingers on
the horizon, and the Moon rises
brilliantly at the end of the clip.

6 Observation of airglow on other Solar System planets

7 See also
8 References
9 External links

Development
The airglow phenomenon was first identified in 1868 by Swedish scientist Anders ngstrm. Since then, it has
been studied in the laboratory, and various chemical reactions have been observed to emit electromagnetic
energy as part of the process. Scientists have identified some of those processes that would be present in Earth's
atmosphere, and astronomers have verified that such emissions are present.

Description

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Airglow - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Airglow is caused by various

processes in the upper
atmosphere, such as the
recombination of atoms which
were photoionized by the sun
during the day, luminescence
caused by cosmic rays striking
the upper atmosphere, and
chemiluminescence caused
Airglow in the Central of France on
mainly by oxygen and nitrogen
13th of August 2015.
reacting with hydroxyl ions at
heights of a few hundred
kilometres. It is not noticeable during the daytime because of the
scattered light from the sun.

12/21/15, 13:13

Airglow in the Central of France on

13th of August 2015 (Bis).

Even at the best ground-based observatories, airglow limits the

sensitivity of telescopes at visible wavelengths. Partly for this reason,
space-based telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope can observe
much fainter objects than current ground-based telescopes at visible
wavelengths.
The airglow at night may be bright enough to be noticed by an observer
and is generally bluish in colour. Although airglow emission is fairly
uniform across the atmosphere, to an observer on the ground it appears
brightest at about 10 degrees above the horizon, because the lower one
looks, the greater the depth of atmosphere one is looking through. Very
low down, however, atmospheric extinction reduces the apparent
brightness of the airglow.

Comet Lovejoy passing behind

Earth's airglow on December 22,
2011.

One airglow mechanism is when an atom of nitrogen combines with an

atom of oxygen to form a molecule of nitric oxide (NO). In the process,
a photon is emitted. This photon may have any of several different
wavelengths characteristic of nitric oxide molecules. The free atoms are available for this process, because
molecules of nitrogen (N2) and oxygen (O2) are dissociated by solar energy in the upper reaches of the
atmosphere and may encounter each other to form NO. Other species that can create air glow in the atmosphere
are hydroxyl (OH),[2][3][4] atomic oxygen (O), sodium (Na) and lithium (Li).[5] See Sodium layer.
The sky brightness is typically quoted in units of astronomical magnitudes per square arcsecond of sky.

Calculation of the effects of airglow

In order to calculate the relative intensity of airglow, we need to convert apparent magnitudes into fluxes of
photons; this clearly depends on the spectrum of the source, but we will ignore that initially. At visible
wavelengths, we need the parameter S0(V), the power per square centimetre of aperture and per micrometre of
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wavelength produced by a zeroth-magnitude star, to convert apparent magnitudes into fluxes -W cm2 m1.[6] If we take the example of a V=28 star observed through a normal V
band filter (
m
bandpass, frequency
Hz), the number
of photons we receive per square
centimeter of telescope aperture
per second from the source is
:
Airglow.

The airglow above the horizon,

captured from the ISS.

(where is Planck's constant;

frequency ).

is the energy of a single photon of

Two images of the sky over the

HAARP Gakona facility using the
NRL-cooled CCD imager at 557.7
nm. The field of view is
approximately 38. The left-hand
image shows the background star field
with the HF transmitter off. The righthand image was taken 63 seconds
later with the HF transmitter on.
Structure is evident in the emission
region.

At V band, the emission from airglow is V=22 per square arc-second at a

high-altitude observatory on a moonless night; in excellent seeing conditions, the image of a star will be about
0.7 arc-second across with an area of 0.4 square arc-second, and so the emission from airglow over the area of
the image corresponds to about V=23. This gives the number of photons from airglow,
:

The signal-to-noise for an ideal ground-based observation with a telescope of area

detector noise), arising from Poisson statistics, is only:

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(ignoring losses and

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If we assume a 10 m diameter ideal ground-based telescope and an unresolved star: every second, over a patch
the size of the seeing-enlarged image of the star, 35 photons arrive from the star and 3500 from air-glow. So,
over an hour, roughly
photons arrive from the air-glow, and approximately
arrive from the source; so the S/N ratio is about :
We can compare this with "real" answers from exposure time calculators. For an 8 m unit Very Large Telescope
telescope, according to the FORS (http://www.eso.org/observing/etc/bin/gen/form?
INS.NAME=FORS1++INS.MODE=imaging) exposure time calculator you need 40 hours of observing time to
reach V = 28, while the 2.4 m Hubble only takes 4 hours according to the ACS
(http://wayback.archive.org/web/20050209215954/http://apt.stsci.edu/webetc/acs/acs_img_etc.jsp) exposure
time calculator. A hypothetical 8 m Hubble telescope would take about 30 minutes.
It should be clear from this calculation that reducing the view field size can make fainter objects more
detectable against the airglow; unfortunately, adaptive optics techniques that reduce the diameter of the view
field of an Earth-based telescope by an order of magnitude only as yet work in the infrared, where the sky is
much brighter. A space telescope isn't restricted by the view field, since they are not impacted by airglow.

Induced airglow
Scientific experiments have been conducted to induce airglow by
directing high-power radio emissions at the Earth's ionosphere.[7] These
radiowaves interact with the ionosphere to induce faint but visible
optical light at specific wavelengths under certain conditions.[8]

Experimental observation
SwissCube-1 is a Swiss satellite operated by Ecole Polytechnique
Fdrale de Lausanne. The spacecraft is a single unit CubeSat, which
was designed to conduct research into airglow within the Earth's
atmosphere and to develop technology for future spacecraft. Though
SwissCube-1 is rather small (10 x 10 x 10 cm) and weighs less than
SwissCube-1's first airglow image of
1 kg, it carries a small telescope for obtaining images of the airglow. The
the Earth (shifted to green from near
first SwissCube-1 image came down on February 18, 2011 and was quite
IR) captured on March 3, 2011.
black with some thermal noise on it. The first airglow image came down
on March 3, 2011. This image has been converted to the human optical
range (green) from its near-infrared measurement. This image provides a measurement of the intensity of the
airglow phenomenon in the near-infrared. The range measured is from 500 to 61400 photons, with a resolution
of 500 photons.[9]

Observation of airglow on other Solar System planets

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The Venus Express spacecraft contains an infrared sensor which has detected near-IR emissions from the upper
atmosphere of Venus. The emissions come from nitric oxide (NO) and from molecular oxygen.[10] Scientists
had previously determined in laboratory testing that during NO production, ultraviolet emissions and near-IR
emissions were produced. The UV radiation has been detected in the atmosphere, but until this mission, the
atmosphere-produced near-IR emissions were only theoretical.[11]

See also
Polar aurora
Optical phenomena
Ionized air glow

Wikimedia Commons has

media related to Airglow.

References
1. "Austrian Software Tools Developed for ESO". www.eso.org. European Southern Observatory. Retrieved 6 June 2014.
2. A. B. Meinel (1950). "OH Emission Bands in the Spectrum of the Night Sky I.". Astrophysical Journal 111: 555.
Bibcode:1950ApJ...111..555M. doi:10.1086/145296.
3. A. B. Meinel (1950). "OH Emission Bands in the Spectrum of the Night Sky II.". Astrophysical Journal 112: 120.
Bibcode:1950ApJ...112..120M. doi:10.1086/145321.
4. F. W. High; et al. (2010). "Sky Variability in the y Band at the LSST Site". The Publications of the Astronomical Society
of the Pacific 122 (892): 722730. arXiv:1002.3637. Bibcode:2010PASP..122..722H. doi:10.1086/653715.
5. Origin of Sodium and Lithium in the Upper Atmosphere
(http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v183/n4673/abs/1831480a0.html)
6. High Energy Astrophysics: Particles, Photons and Their Detection Vol 1, Malcolm S. Longair, ISBN 0-521-38773-6
7. HF-induced airglow at magnetic zenith: Thermal and parametric instabilities near electron gyroharmonics
(http://wayback.archive.org/web/20090726023615/http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2005GL023864.shtml). E.V.
Mishin et al., Geophysical Research Letters Vol. 32, L23106, doi:10.1029/2005GL023864
(https://dx.doi.org/10.1029%2F2005GL023864), 2005
8. NRL HAARP Overview (http://www.nrl.navy.mil/content.php?P=04REVIEW106). Naval Research Laboratory.
9. SwissCube official website (http://swisscube.epfl.ch/)
10. Garcia Munoz, A.; Mills, F. P.; Piccioni, G.; Drossart, P. (2009). "The near-infrared nitric oxide nightglow in the upper
atmosphere of Venus". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106 (4): 985988.
Bibcode:2009PNAS..106..985G. doi:10.1073/pnas.0808091106. ISSN 0027-8424.
11. Wilson, Elizabeth (2009). "PLANETARY SCIENCE Spectral band in Venus nightglow allows study of NO, O".
Chemical & Engineering News 87 (4): 11. doi:10.1021/cen-v087n004.p011a. ISSN 0009-2347.

External links
Description and Images (http://www.atoptics.co.uk/highsky/airglow1.htm)
Sky Brightness Information (http://www.not.iac.es/weather/skybrightness.html) for Roque de los
Muchachos Observatory
Night-side Glow Detected at Mars Space.com interview
(http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_glow_050131.html)
Stereoscopic Observations of HAARP Glows from HIPAS, Poker Flat, and Nenana, Alaska by R.F.
Wuerker et Al.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airglow

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(http://wayback.archive.org/web/20060901225612/http://www.hipas.alaska.edu/hipasweb/air_glow.htm)
An improved signal-to-noise ratio of a cool imaging photon detector for Fabry - Perot interferometer
measurements of low-intensity air glow by T P Davies and P L Dyson
(http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0957-0233/8/4/016)
Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph Instrument Handbook for Cycle 13
(http://www.stsci.edu/hst/stis/performance/background/documents/handbooks/currentIHB/c06_exptime6.
html)
SwissCube| The first Swiss Satellite (http://swisscube.epfl.ch/)
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