Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Huestis, D. L..
A summary of our recent work using terrestrial nightglow spectra, obtained from astronomical instrumentation, to directly measure, or evaluate theoretical values for fundamental parameters of astrophysically important atomic lines.
Astronomical sky spectra, which are byproducts of long-slit observations with echelle spectrographs on large telescopes, provide a unique platform for studying the optical emissions of excited molecules and atoms in the terrestrial atmosphere that can greatly extend present knowledge based on laboratory spectra. This paper summarizes some of the advances that have been made in our understanding of the lower electronic states of O2 and other species from the sky spectra and from direct observations of the Venus nightglow.
Simple group theoretical principles are applied to the consideration of electron scattering off atoms and diatomic and polyatomic molecules. This approach is also used to estimate relative strengths of electron-impact-induced transitions of diatomic and polyatomic molecules.