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P. D. Feldman (JHU), E. M. Murphy (JHU), H. W. Moos (JHU), FUSE Team
During orbital verification, FUSE obtained spectra of the terrestrial airglow between 905 and 1187 Å\ from an altitude of 765 km. All three apertures record the atmospheric emissions with effective spectral resolutions of 0.33, 0.044 and 0.033 Å. Looking up, optically thick emissions of \ion{O}{1}, \ion{N}{1}, and \ion{N}{2} are seen in addition to geocoronal \ion{H}{1} and \ion{He}{1}, the latter in second order. Several orbits were obtained of observations of the sunlit Earth and disclose a wealth of emissions resulting from the electron impact excitation of N2. These spectra have the highest spectral resolution and sensitivity in this spectral range to date and will provide valuable input to the interpretation of lower resolution spectra from current and future Earth remote sensing missions.
This work was supported by NASA contract NAS5-32985.