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Abstract:
To elucidate the vertical coupling processes from the lower to the upper atmosphere, imaging observations of airglow in the mesosphere and ionosphere were performed from the International Space Station (ISS). The two-dimensional structures of the airglow were captured with the Visible and near Infrared Spectral Imager (VISI) instrument of the ISS-Ionosphere, Mesosphere, upper Atmosphere and Plasmasphere mapping (ISS-IMAP) mission. The instrument was installed on the Exposed Facility of the Japanese Experiment Module of the ISS from August 2012 to August 2015. Two airglow emissions were primarily measured by VISI. One is the mesospheric airglow from the molecular oxygen at a wavelength of 762nm, and the other is the ionospheric airglow from the atomic oxygen at a wavelength of 630nm. The former can capture various types of meso- and small-scale structures around 95km altitude, such as the concentric wave structures caused by upward propagating atmospheric gravity waves, mesospheric bores caused by the temperature inversion layers, and bright band structures caused by the non-migrating tidal winds. The latter can capture the meso- and large-scale structures in the F-region ionosphere, such as traveling ionospheric disturbances, plasma bubbles, and equatorial ionization anomalies. In the presentation, the new findings of the two-dimensional observations by VISI are introduced and the effects of the lower atmosphere on the ionospheres at low- and mid-latitudes are discussed.
