HiT&MIS: Instrumentation for Auroral and Ionospheric Airglow Studies

Abstract:

We have developed a high-throughput imaging spectrograph that uses an echelle grating operating at a high dispersion order to observe extended sources such as atmospheric airglow and auroral emissions at high spectral resolution. Instead of the conventional single slit this instrument uses four with appropriate foreoptics to image a long, narrow field of view of approximately 0.1 × 50 deg. By using interference filters for order sorting, this instrument can simultaneously observe multiple spectral features located anywhere in the visible band (approximately 300 to 1000 nm) at high resolution. The current implementation images the scene at 6 wavelengths (427.8, 486.1, 557.7, 630.0, 656.3 and 777.4 nm), but the flexibility of the design of the instrument allows varying the wavelengths of interest with minimal modifications. We have constructed two spectrographs to be located at different geomagnetic locations. This will enable tomography of atmospheric phenomena for full 3-D rendering of the volume emission. We will combine HiT&MIS data with data from LITES, GROUP-C (on ISS) and other ground based sources such as GIRO, HiTIES, HIRISE and CHIMES along with the 13 all-sky imagers operated by Boston University to form a more complete picture of the ionosphere.

This work is supported by the NSF grant AGS1315354