PALACE v1.0: Paranal Airglow Line And Continuum Emission model

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Hauptverfasser: Noll, Stefan, Schmidt, Carsten, Hannawald, Patrick, Kausch, Wolfgang, Kimeswenger, Stefan
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Noll, Stefan
Schmidt, Carsten
Hannawald, Patrick
Kausch, Wolfgang
Kimeswenger, Stefan
author_facet Noll, Stefan
Schmidt, Carsten
Hannawald, Patrick
Kausch, Wolfgang
Kimeswenger, Stefan
contents Below about 2.3 $μ$m, the nighttime emission of the Earth's atmosphere is dominated by non-thermal radiation from the mesosphere and thermosphere. As this airglow can even outshine scattered moonlight in the near-infrared regime, the understanding of the Earth's night-sky brightness requires good knowledge of the complex airglow emission spectrum and its variability. As airglow modelling is very challenging, the comprehensive characterisation of airglow emission requires large data sets of empirical data. For fixed locations, this can be best achieved by archived spectra of large astronomical telescopes with a wide wavelength coverage, high spectral resolving power, and good temporal sampling. Using 10 years of data from the X-shooter echelle spectrograph in the wavelength range from 0.3 to 2.5 $μ$m and additional data from the Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph at the Very Large Telescope at Cerro Paranal in Chile, we have succeeded to build a comprehensive spectroscopic airglow model for this low-latitude site under consideration of theoretical data from the HITRAN database for molecules and from different sources for atoms. The Paranal Airglow Line And Continuum Emission (PALACE) model comprises 9 chemical species, 26,541 emission lines, and 3 unresolved continuum components. Moreover, there are climatologies of relative intensity, solar cycle effect, and residual variability with respect to local time and day of year for 23 variability classes. Spectra can be calculated with a stand-alone code for different conditions, also including optional atmospheric absorption and scattering. In comparison to the observed X-shooter spectra, PALACE shows convincing agreement and is significantly better than the previous, widely used airglow model for Cerro Paranal.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_10683
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle PALACE v1.0: Paranal Airglow Line And Continuum Emission model
Noll, Stefan
Schmidt, Carsten
Hannawald, Patrick
Kausch, Wolfgang
Kimeswenger, Stefan
Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Below about 2.3 $μ$m, the nighttime emission of the Earth's atmosphere is dominated by non-thermal radiation from the mesosphere and thermosphere. As this airglow can even outshine scattered moonlight in the near-infrared regime, the understanding of the Earth's night-sky brightness requires good knowledge of the complex airglow emission spectrum and its variability. As airglow modelling is very challenging, the comprehensive characterisation of airglow emission requires large data sets of empirical data. For fixed locations, this can be best achieved by archived spectra of large astronomical telescopes with a wide wavelength coverage, high spectral resolving power, and good temporal sampling. Using 10 years of data from the X-shooter echelle spectrograph in the wavelength range from 0.3 to 2.5 $μ$m and additional data from the Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph at the Very Large Telescope at Cerro Paranal in Chile, we have succeeded to build a comprehensive spectroscopic airglow model for this low-latitude site under consideration of theoretical data from the HITRAN database for molecules and from different sources for atoms. The Paranal Airglow Line And Continuum Emission (PALACE) model comprises 9 chemical species, 26,541 emission lines, and 3 unresolved continuum components. Moreover, there are climatologies of relative intensity, solar cycle effect, and residual variability with respect to local time and day of year for 23 variability classes. Spectra can be calculated with a stand-alone code for different conditions, also including optional atmospheric absorption and scattering. In comparison to the observed X-shooter spectra, PALACE shows convincing agreement and is significantly better than the previous, widely used airglow model for Cerro Paranal.
title PALACE v1.0: Paranal Airglow Line And Continuum Emission model
topic Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.10683