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T. G. Slanger, B. D. Sharpee, P. C. Cosby (SRI International)
A flux-calibrated atlas of sky spectra lines was recently published, based on data accumulated at the UVES echelle spectrograph at the 8-m Kueyen VLT telescope.[\textit{Hanuschik}, 2003] 2810 lines were measured, at a resolution of 50,000, but were not assigned to the emitting atomic and molecular species. Over the last several years, sky spectra from the Keck I/HIRES system have been analyzed, leading to assignments of thousands of lines, the great majority originating with O2 and OH. This astronomical by-product has had considerable impact in furthering our understanding of atmospheric processes. Here we present the UV portion of the UVES data set along with the line assignments, which include bands of the O2(\textit{A-X}) and O2(\textit{A’-a}) systems, in addition to the newly-discovered O2(\textit{c-b}) system.[\textit{Slanger et al.}, 2003] With the lines assigned, it is possible to use the molecular rotational distributions and the relative line intensities to deduce temperatures for the emitting regions in the nightglow. Many weaker lines were not included in the UVES atlas, but they can be recognized from the patterns of the identified molecular bands. We limit ourselves here to the lines of the UVES atlas, with the understanding that the identification of many more lines will become available.
This work was supported by a grant from NSF Planetary Astronomy.
Hanuschik, R.W., A Flux-Calibrated High-Resolution Atlas of Optical Sky Emission from UVES, \textit{Astronomy and Astrophysics}, 407, 1157-1164, 2003.
Slanger, T.G., P.C. Cosby, and D.L. Huestis, A New O2 Band System: The O2(\textit{c}1\Sigmau---\textit{b}1\Sigmag+) Transition in the Terrestrial Nightglow, \textit{Journal of Geophysical Research}, 108 (A2), 1089, doi:10.1029/2002JA009677,2003.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 5
© 2004. The American Astronomical Society.