Development of airglow temperature photometers with cooled-CCD detectors

Abstract We have developed three airglow temperature photometers with cooled-CCD detectors. The photometers measure rotational temperatures using the airglow emissions of OH and O2 near the mesopause region (altitude: 80s-100 km). The photometers also measure six other airglow and auroral lines at wavelengths of 557.7, 630.0, 777.4, 589.3, 427.8, and 486.1 nm. The CCD detectors are used to distinguish the emission lines in these airglow bands, similarly to those used by the Spectral Airglow Temperature Imagers (SATI). In this paper, we describe the configuration of the photometers, their calibration, the data processing to extract rotational temperatures and emission intensities from the measured airglow spectra, as well as the initial deployment at Platteville, Colorado (40.2°N, 255.3°E), when their observations were compared with the concurrent and nearly collocated observations by a sodium lidar. We obtain a good correlation and some systematic difference of temperatures from the photometers and the lidar, and discuss possible causes of the temperature difference.