Airglow events visible to the naked eye

Abstract

During IR photographic airglow observations covering several years, three naked-eye events have been recorded. Two of these are moving, luminous acoustic gravity wave groups of some 10-15-km wavelength, which occur near high lunar tide in the atmosphere. The events appear quickly, endure 0.5-1 h, then fade. Visible photos of two events appear enhanced while little enhancement is present in the IR photos, although the structures are well correlated. If these events are due to OH, we suggest that some unrecognized mechanism, perhaps a gravity wave interaction, enhances the visible transitions of the OH over the IR transitions. If the events are due to an unrecognized continuum emitter, perhaps NO, its emission must occur at the same height as the OH. Spectra seem to be the only reasonable approach to solving this problem.

Propagation of short-period gravity waves at high-latitudes during the MaCWAVE winter campaign

“…Another type of airglow wave pattern termed "ripples" has been reported on numerous prior occasions (e.g. Peterson, 1979;Taylor and Hapgood, 1990). These are short wavelength (typically 5-15 km) spatially isolated, transient events (lifetimes ∼ few tens of minutes) that have been associated with in-situ wave generation (e.g.…”

Statistical characteristics of gravity wave activities observed by an OH airglow imager at Xinglong, in northern China

“…These AGWs can propagate freely or be ducted by thermal and/or wind ducts in the MLT (Isler et al, 1997;Walterscheid et al, 1999;Hecht et al, 2001b;Snively and Pasko, 2005). Ripples are short-scale, localized, small spatial extent (< 5 × 10 3 km 2 ) and exhibit short lifetime (<45 min) (Peterson, 1979). They are believed to be generated in-situ likely owing to dynamical or convective instabilities (Hecht et al, 2001a;Hecht, 2004;Li et al, 2005a, b;Yue et al, 2010).…”

Seasonal and local time variability of ripples from airglow imager observations in US and Japan

“…Ground-based airglow imagers have been utilized to study these AGW activities by charactering the emission perturbation since Peterson and Kieffaber (1973). The most commonly observed feature is the quasi-monochromatic (QM) wave, which appears as coherent bands in the imagers (Peterson, 1979). QM waves have typical horizontal wavelengths of 20-30 km and periods of 5-20 min.…”