From pointing measurements in stellar occultation to atmospheric temperature, pressure and density profiling: simulations and first GOMOS results

Sofieva, Viktoria; Kyrölä, E.; Ferraguto, Massimo

doi:10.1109/igarss.2003.1294657

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 8 publications

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“…Since 1995 many RO missions have retrieved atmospheric density and temperature accurately in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere up to 30-35 km (Hajj et al, 2002), which are utilized for research on diverse topics like numerical weather prediction and deep convection in the tropics (Anthes, 2011;Scherllin-Pirscher et al, 2021). SO has been utilized to study Earth's atmosphere via refraction (White et al, 1983;Yee et al, 2002;Sofieva et al, 2003). In 2002, the first instrument dedicated to SO was launched on the ENVISAT (ENVIronmental SATellite) platform.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stratospheric temperature measurements from nanosatellite stellar occultation observations of refractive bending

et al. 2023

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Abstract. Stellar occultation observations from space can probe the stratosphere and mesosphere at a fine vertical scale around the globe. Unlike other measurement techniques like radiosondes and aircraft, stellar occultation has the potential to observe the atmosphere above 30 km, and unlike radio occultation, stellar occultation probes fine-scale phenomena with potential to observe atmospheric turbulence. We imaged the refractive bending angle of a star centroid for a series of occultations by the atmosphere. Atmospheric refractivity, density, and then temperature are retrieved from the bending observations with the Abel transformation and Edlén's law, the hydrostatic equation, and the ideal gas law. The retrieval technique is applied to data collected by two nanosatellites operated by Terran Orbital. Measurements were primarily taken by the GEOStare SV2 mission, with a dedicated imaging telescope, supplemented with images captured by spacecraft bus sensors, namely the star trackers on other Terran Orbital missions. The bending angle noise floor is 10 and 30 arcsec for the star tracker and GEOStare SV2 data, respectively. The most significant sources of uncertainty are due to centroiding errors due to the fairly low-resolution stellar images and telescope pointing knowledge derived from noisy satellite attitude sensors. The former mainly affects the star tracker data, while the latter limits the GEOStare SV2 accuracy, with both providing low vertical resolution. This translates to a temperature profile retrieval up to roughly 20 km for both star tracker and GEOStare SV2 datasets. In preparation of an upcoming 2023 mission designed to correct these deficiencies, SOHIP, we simulated bending angle measurements with varying magnitudes of error. The expected maximum altitude of retrieved temperature is 41 km on average for these simulated measurements with a noise floor of 0.39 arcsec. Our work highlights the capabilities of stellar occultation observations from nanosatellites for atmospheric sounding. Future work will investigate high-frequency observations of atmospheric gravity waves and turbulence, mitigating the major uncertainties observed in these datasets.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stratospheric temperature measurements from nanosatellite stellar occultation observations of refractive bending

et al. 2023

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Stratospheric Temperature Measurements from NanoSatellite Observations of Stellar Occultation Bending

McGuffin

Cameron-Smith

Horsley

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Abstract. Stellar occultation observations from space can probe the stratosphere and mesosphere at a fine vertical scale around the globe unlike other measurement techniques like radiosondes, aircraft, and radio occultation. We imaged the refractive bending angle of a star centroid for a series of occultations by the atmosphere. Atmospheric refractivity, density, and then temperature are retrieved from the bending observations with the Abel transformation and Edlén's law, the hydrostatic equation, and the ideal gas law. The retrieval technique is applied to data collected by two nanosatellites operated by Terran Orbital. Measurements were primarily taken by the GEOStare SV2 mission, with a dedicated imaging telescope, supplemented with images captured by spacecraft bus sensors, namely the star trackers on other Terran Orbital missions. The bending angle noise floor is 10 arcseconds and 30 arcseconds for the star tracker and GEOStare SV2 data, respectively. The most significant sources of uncertainty are due to centroiding errors due to the fairly low-resolution stellar images and telescope pointing knowledge derived from noisy satellite attitude sensors. The former mainly affects the star tracker data, while the latter limits the GEOStare SV2 accuracy with both providing low vertical resolution. This translates to a temperature profile retrieval up to roughly 20 km for both star tracker and GEOStare SV2 datasets. In preparation of an upcoming 2023 mission designed to correct these deficiencies, SOHIP, we simulated bending angle measurements with varying magnitudes of error. The expected maximum altitude of retrieved temperature is 41 km on average for these simulated measurements with a noise floor of 0.39 arcseconds. Our work highlights the capabilities of stellar occultation observations from nanosatellites for atmospheric sounding. Future work will investigate high frequency observations of atmospheric gravity waves and turbulence, mitigating the major uncertainties observed in these datasets.

show abstract

From pointing measurements in stellar occultation to atmospheric temperature, pressure and density profiling: simulations and first GOMOS results

Cited by 2 publications

References 8 publications

Stratospheric temperature measurements from nanosatellite stellar occultation observations of refractive bending

Stratospheric temperature measurements from nanosatellite stellar occultation observations of refractive bending

Stratospheric Temperature Measurements from NanoSatellite Observations of Stellar Occultation Bending

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