Weblog
12 February 2015
NASA
Yesterday I discussed the faint glow close to the horizon as on account of airglow of the ambiance. It tends to be a really faint impact, much more dim than the zodiacal mild, and isn’t typically seen with the bare eye. Whereas airglow is gorgeous in photos, for ground-based astronomers it may be bothersome.
NASA/annotations by Alex Rivest
Airglow happens when atoms and molecules within the higher ambiance are ionized, both by mild from the Solar, or by cosmic rays. There are additionally chemical reactions that produce mild within the ambiance. All of those results mix to present the ambiance a faint however uniform glow day and night time. It’s solely at night time that the impact turns into seen. Whereas the inexperienced glow of molecular oxygen tends to be the dominant colour, you can even get yellow from sodium, purple from atomic oxygen and even a weak blue glow.
As a result of airglow is unfold all through the sky, it tends to hamper ground-based astronomy. Mainly it’s a type of mild air pollution that by no means goes away, irrespective of how remoted your observatory is. One approach to overcome the impact of airglow is to restrict your telescope’s subject of view. In the event you observe a faint object in a small portion of the sky, the patch of air above your view is likewise small, and the airglow impact is much less vital. There are additionally methods adaptive optics can restrict the impression. However as we construct ever bigger ground-based telescopes to take a look at ever dimmer objects, airglow may more and more turn into an issue.
It’s a recurring downside in astronomy, the place what’s proper in entrance of you isn’t what you need to observe.
