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Terrestrial OH nightglow measurements during the Rosetta flyby
Author(s) -
Migliorini A.,
Gérard J. C.,
Soret L.,
Piccioni G.,
Capaccioni F.,
Filacchione G.,
Snels M.,
Tosi F.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1002/2015gl064485
Subject(s) - airglow , population , relaxation (psychology) , infrared , quenching (fluorescence) , physics , vibrational energy relaxation , atomic physics , quantum number , analytical chemistry (journal) , nuclear magnetic resonance , atmospheric sciences , chemistry , optics , excited state , fluorescence , psychology , social psychology , demography , chromatography , sociology
We present a study of the terrestrial hydroxyl nightglow emissions observed with the Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer on board the Rosetta mission. During these observations, the OH Δ v = 1 and 2 sequences were measured simultaneously. This allowed investigating the relative population of the v = 1 to 9 vibrational levels by using both sequences. In particular, the relative population of the vibrational level v = 1 is determined for the first time from observations. The vibrational population decreases with increasing vibrational quantum number. A good agreement is found with a recent model calculation assuming multiquantum relaxation for OH( v ) quenching by O 2 and single‐quantum relaxation for OH( v ) by N 2 .