Uv (ultraviolet) ionospheric remote sensing with the Polar Bear satellite

Technical Report · Tue Aug 08 00:00:00 EDT 1989

OSTI ID:5295590

DelGrecro, F P; Eastes, R W; Huffman, R E

This paper presents a brief description of some recent work interpreting and analyzing data obtained by the AIRS sensor on the Polar BEAR satellite. The Polar BEAR satellite was launched in November 1986 into a nearly circular 1000 km orbit with an orbital inclination of 89.5 degrees and a nodal regression of 0.05 degrees per day. In the course of a year the satellite experiences all local times twice a year. One of the instruments on Polar BEAR is the Auroral Ionospheric Remote Sensor (AIRS). AIRS has been described previously and some of the early data from that instrument presented. Briefly, in its primary operating mode AIRS was designed to return four simultaneous images of the atmospheric radiation at Northern latitudes, in the far- and near-ultraviolet (UV) and the visible at 6300 A. Two of the data streams originate from photomultipliers at the exit plane of a one-eighth-meter far-UV spectrometer. The other two data streams originate at photomultipliers behind narrow-band UV and visible filters. A single telescope illuminates both the spectrometer entrance slit and the filtered detectors. In the normal imaging mode of operation, on a three second cycle the line of sight of all four channels is deflected from horizon to horizon perpendicular to the orbital path by a plane mirror at the entrance to the telescope.

• Research Organization: Air Force Geophysics Lab., Hanscom AFB, MA (USA)
• OSTI ID: 5295590
• Report Number(s): AD-A-211359/5/XAB; AFGL-TR-89-0199
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
AURORAL ZONES
SPECTRA
IONOSPHERE
REMOTE SENSING
DATA PROCESSING
FAR ULTRAVIOLET RADIATION
IMAGES
MEASURING INSTRUMENTS
MIRRORS
NEAR ULTRAVIOLET RADIATION
NORTHERN HEMISPHERE
ORBITS
REGRESSION ANALYSIS
SPECTROMETERS
TELESCOPES
EARTH ATMOSPHERE
EARTH PLANET
ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION
MATHEMATICS
PLANETARY IONOSPHERES
PLANETS
PROCESSING
RADIATIONS
STATISTICS
ULTRAVIOLET RADIATION
640201* - Atmospheric Physics- Auroral
Ionospheric
& Magetospheric Phenomena