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Airglow Emissions on Venus: Spatial and Temporal Evolution at 1.27 μm as Seen from the IRTF
Presentation #408.03 in the session “The Upper Atmosphere of Venus”.
Published onOct 03, 2021
Airglow Emissions on Venus: Spatial and Temporal Evolution at 1.27 μm as Seen from the IRTF
We present a review of Venus’s nightside atmospheric airglow features recorded in NASA Infrared Telescope Facility SpeX (spectral and imaging) observations obtained in June, July, September, and October 2020 [1]. These observations were taken in conjunction with the Akatsuki mission and BepiColombo Venus flybys. The observations are a follow-on to Venus Express VIRTIS observations which showed O2 (1Δg) emission at 1.27 μm, produced near ~95 km altitude, which has been shown to be related to mesospheric dynamics and thermal processes [2,3]. We obtained spectral image cubes of Venus using SpeX in PRISM mode (0.8 to 2.5 μm) by scanning the spectrograph’s slit across Venus’s disk in 100 to 150 positions. The CO2 window near 1.27 μm is broad enough to contain channels with and without airglow. We enhance the contrast of airglow features by subtracting channels in which no airglow appears. We employ ATRAN generated spectra, synthetic atmospheric spectra, to model telluric atmospheric absorption [4]. Detailed latitude and local time airglow feature tracking will be presented. Python notebooks used in the data reduction process are available on the VENIM site [5]. This work was supported by NASA awards: 80NSSC20K0791 and 80NSSC20K107; and SwRI grant 15.R6117.
[1] SpeX: A Medium-Resolution 0.8-5.5 micron Spectrograph and Imager for the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility J. T. Rayner, D. W. Toomey, P. M. Onaka, A. J. Denault, W. E. Stahlberger, W. D. Vacca, M. C. Cushing and S. Wang (2003, PASP 115, 362).
[2] Hueso, R., A. Sánchez-Lavega, G. Piccioni, P. Drossart, J. C. Gérard, I. Khatuntsev, L. Zasova, and A. Migliorini (2008), Morphology and dynamics of Venus oxygen airglow from Venus Express/Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer observations, J. Geophys. Res., 113, E00B02, doi:10.1029/2008JE003081.
[3] Lauriane Soret, Jean-Claude Gérard, Giuseppe Piccioni, Pierre Drossart, Time variations of O2(a1Δ) nightglow spots on the Venus nightside and dynamics of the upper mesosphere, Icarus, Volume 237, 2014, Pages 306-314, ISSN 0019-1035, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2014.03.034.
[4] Lord, S. D., 1992, NASA Technical Memorandum 103957
[5] Aye, K.-Michael, VENIM, 2020 June 3, v0.9.2:https://github.com/michaelaye/venim
