Abstract
A new method for measuring atmospheric refraction angles is presented, with in-orbit measurements demonstrating a precision of (). Key advantages of the method are the following: (1) Simultaneous observation of two celestial points during occultation (i.e., top and bottom edges of the solar image) eliminates error from instrument attitude uncertainty. (2) The refraction angle is primarily a normalized difference measurement, causing only scale error, not absolute error. (3) A large number of detector pixels are used in the edge location by fitting to a known edge shape. The resulting refraction angle measurements allow temperature sounding up to the lower mesosphere.
© 2009 Optical Society of America
Full Article | PDF ArticleMore Like This
Dale M. Ward and Benjamin M. Herman
Appl. Opt. 37(36) 8306-8317 (1998)
David Gómez-Ramírez, John W. C. McNabb, James M. Russell, Mark E. Hervig, Lance E. Deaver, Greg Paxton, and Peter F. Bernath
Appl. Opt. 52(13) 2950-2959 (2013)
M. C. Abrams, M. R. Gunson, L. L. Lowes, C. P. Rinsland, and R. Zander
Appl. Opt. 35(16) 2810-2820 (1996)