Abstract The stellar occultation technique is a clean and powerful means of detecting and quantifying minor gases in the earth's atmosphere. The results obtained are totally insensitive to knowledge of the absolute flux of the star, and are not influenced by instrument calibration problems. Pioneering observations of nocturnal mesospheric ozone and thermospheric molecular oxygen by the stellar occultation technique were made in 1970 and 1971 with the Wisconsin stellar photometers on board the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory-2. A limb crossing geometry was used. The high resolution Princeton ultraviolet spectrometer aboard Copernicus was used in the summers of 1975, 1976 and 1977 to measure altitude profiles of molecular hydrogen, atomic chlorine and nitric oxide in addition to ozone and molecular oxygen. A limb grazing geometry was employed. The ozone densities show wide variation from orbit to orbit and particularly betewen the OAO-2 and Copernicus observations. A H2 density of 1×108 cm−3 at 95 km, and a NO density less than 106 cm−3 for altitudes greater than 85 km were measured.
Measurement of minor species (H2, Cl, O3, NO) in the earth's atmosphere by the occultation technique
Advances in Space Research ; 1 , 9 ; 127-141
01.01.1981
15 pages
Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch
Sensing the earth's atmosphere with occultation satellites
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