Topside observation of gravity waves

Abstract

The AEPI (Atmospheric Emissions Photometric Imager) experiment on the ATLAS-1 shuttle mission (launched March 24, 1992) imaged the earth night airglow emission in O2 Atmospheric (0,0) bands, at 762.0 nm. Earthward views of O2 A bands show structure from gravity waves which exhibit extended horizontal structure with horizontal wavelenghts on the order of 50-100 km. These observations of the O2 A (0,0) bands are particularly interesting since in this wavelength the lower atmosphere absorbs all the earth-reflected emissions and most of the spectrally diffuse backgrounds. Herein we present observations of gravity waves using a topside airglow imaging technique.