The Mars Oxygen Visible Dayglow: A Martian Year of NOMAD/UVIS Observations

The Ultraviolet and Visible Spectrometer Ultraviolet (UVIS UV) and Visible Spectrometer channel of the Nadir and Occultation for MArs Discovery spectrometer aboard the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter has made limb observations of the Martian dayglow during more than a Martian year. Two pointing modes have been applied: (a) In the inertial mode, the spectrometer scans the atmosphere twice down to near the surface and provides altitude profiles of the dayglow; (b) in the tracking mode, the atmosphere is scanned at varying latitudes at a nearly constant altitude through the entire observation. We present a statistical study of the vertical and seasonal distribution of the recently discovered oxygen green and red lines at 557.7 nm and 630 nm. It indicates that the brightness of the green line emission responds to changes in the Lyman-α flux. The peak altitude of the green line emission increases seasonally when the Sun-Mars distance decreases. The lower peak of the green line statistically drops by 15–20 km between perihelion and aphelion at mid-to high altitude. The main lower peak intensity shows an asymmetry between the two hemispheres. It is significantly brighter and more pronounced in the southern hemisphere than in the north. This is a consequence of the stronger Lyman-α solar flux near perihelion. The second component of the oxygen red line at 636.4 nm is also detected for the first time in the Martian atmosphere. A photochemical model is used to simulate the variations of the green dayglow observed along limb tracking orbits. © 2022. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.
The NOMAD experiment is led by the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (IASB-BIRA), assisted by Co-PI teams from Spain (IAA-CSIC), Italy (INAF-IAPS), and the United Kingdom (Open University). This project acknowledges funding by the Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO), with the financial and contractual coordination by the ESA Prodex Office (PEA 4000103401, 4000121493, 4000129686), by Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MCIU) and by European funds under grants PGC2018-101836-B-I00 and ESP2017-87143-R (MINECO/FEDER), as well as by UK Space Agency. This work is supported by the UK Space Agency through grants ST/V002295/1, ST/V005332/1 and ST/S00145X/1 and Italian Space Agency through Grant 2018-2-HH.0. This research was supported by the Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS under Grant No. 30442502 (ET_HOME). B. H. is supported by FNRS. The IAA/CSIC team acknowledges financial support from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the “Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa” award for the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709). L. Gkouvelis is supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. B. H. is supported by the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS).