Title: Chapter 11. Theory of the Twilight and Day Airglow
Abstract: Publisher SummaryThis chapter discusses that the most obvious mechanisms to investigate the production of a twilight airglow are resonance scattering and fluorescence. In the absence of secondary scatterings, deactivation, and polarization, the theory is quite straightforward. Observations of the sodium day airglow from balloons can supply important information on the sodium layer beyond what can be found from twilight data alone. Observations on the twilight and day airglow give abundances of Na atoms; in order to understand how Na is related to the total sodium abundance, both the photochemical and ionic equilibria are examined. At low altitudes sodium will be incorporated in some compound; at higher levels it will become ionized. To a first approximation the intensity of the dayglow will be about the same as that at twilight. The Na abundance does not appear to change much during the day or night, as judged from the small morning-to-evening twilight variations and from the agreement between abundances as determined from the twilight theory and daytime absorption.
Publication Year: 1961
Publication Date: 1961-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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