Auroral photometry from the Atmosphere Explorer Satellite

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Abstract
Two passes of the Atmosphere Explorer C satellite over the Poker Flat Optical Observatory and the Chatanika Radar Facility provided the best auroral measurements from space and from the ground available to date for demonstrating the capability of remote sensing from space to yield quantitative auroral and ionospheric parameters. It is shown that the emission rate of the N2+ (1NG) 4278 Å band computed from intensity measurements of energetic auroral electrons tracks the same spectral feature measured remotely from the satellite over 2 decades of intensity. This provides a stringent test for the procedure adopted to correct the optical measurements for atmospheric scattering effects and verifies the absolute intensity with respect to the ground‐based photometric measurements, referenced to a laboratory calibration. In situ satellite measurements of ion densities and ground‐based radar measurements of electron density profiles provide a consistent picture of the ionospheric response to the auroral input that our model is capable of predicting while at the same time also predicting the observed optical emission rate. Modeling therefore is the link between global remote sensing optical measurements and the ionospheric response to auroral energetic particle bombardment.