[en] WAMDII, the wide-angle Michelson Doppler imaging interferometer, was used to measure the neutral wind in the lower thermosphere by the Doppler shift of the O I 557-nm line. Observations were made at Saskatoon (60.5 degree N invariant) around the spring equinox of 1985 with WAMDII coupled to an all-sky lens. With dopplergrams averaged over 3 to 30 min, no evidence was found for persistent highly localized winds on either of the two nights studied, one viewing only aurora and one viewing only airglow. The nocturnal variation was determined for both nights using average horizontal wind for the whole all-sky image. The pattern for the auroral case shows winds parallel to the aurora orientation in the evening but substantial crosswinds near midnight. High latitude general circulation models seem to represent this case better than local auroral generation models. The airglow case showed eastward winds in the morning sector

[en] Previous studies of photometric time sequences from pulsating aurora have established that the O(¹S) metastable leading to the emission of the auroral green line is excited by two processes, one direct, the other indirect, with the indirect precursor having a lifetime of about 0.1s. In this paper the authors report on new high time-resolution measurements which extend the observations of precursor lifetime down to about 0.01s. Simultaneous observations of pulsations in the Begard-Kaplan band system were also made in order to obtain direct measurements of the lifetimes of the N₂(A³Σ_u⁺) metastable; there were found to be essentially equal to those of the precursor over the lifetime range from 0.01s to 0.1s, and less well-correlated for longer lifetimes. This result identifies the O(¹S) precursor as N₂(A³Σ_u⁺), at least over the altitude range 97 to 125 km

[en] The WIND Imaging Interferometer (WINDII) on the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) is a CCD imager which views a selection of airglow emissions at the limb through a field-widened Michelson interferometer. Winds are calculated from the Doppler shifts of the spectral lines, detected as changes in the phase of the fringes. WINDII has been operating in space for almost three years and its performance has been monitored over that time. It continues to function well, though subtle changes have been seen. This paper is a discussion of the endurance of the instrument and of the changes that have occurred during the mission

[en] Among the emissions viewed by the Wind Imaging Interferometer (WINDII) on the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) are selected lines in the (0-0) transition of the O2 atmospheric band. These lines are viewed simultaneously using a narrow band filter/wide-angle Michelson interferometer combination. The narrow band filter is used to separate the lines on the CCD (spectral-spatial scanning) and the Michelson used to modulate the emissions so that winds and rotational temperatures may be measured from the Doppler shifts and relative intensities of the lines. In this report this technique will be outlined and the on-orbit behavior since launch summarized