National Virtual Aeronomical Observatory Brian Sharpee Molecular Physics Laboratory SRI International NASA AISRP Meeting NASA Ames, April 6, 2005

From 85 km away From 2x10 km away 16 1) What is the NVAO? A “virtual observatory”, allowing the observation of the earth’s atmosphere with astronomical instrumentation without physically traveling to an observatory. A catalog of sky spectra taken with astronomical instrumentation from numerous telescopes. An interactive interface to directly derive scientific information from cataloged spectra. NASA AISRP Meeting NASA Ames, April 6, 2005

From 85 km away From 2x10 km away 16 Planetary Nebula: IC 418 Reduced spectrum of IC 418 in vicinity of neutral oxygen "green ” line at nm 2) Why does the atmosphere glow at night? NASA AISRP Meeting NASA Ames, April 6, 2005

2) Why does the atmosphere glow at night? During day: sunlight disassocaites molcules and ionizes atoms. O O O2O2 O +,NO + O, N 2 O 2, OH NASA AISRP Meeting NASA Ames, April 6, 2005

2) Why does the atmosphere glow at night? At night ions, atoms, molecules recombine: O + O + N 2 /CO 2 N 2 /CO 2 + O 2 * O 2 * + O O 2 + O( 1 S) O 3 + H O 2 + OH(v=1-9) NO + + e - O +N( 2 D) O e - O + O( 1 D, 1 S) O O O2*O2* N2N2 N2N2 O +,NO + O, N 2 O 2, OH NASA AISRP Meeting NASA Ames, April 6, 2005

2) Why does the atmosphere glow at night? OH* OH(v>=0)+h ( nm) O 2 * O 2 /O 2 * + h ( nm) O( 1 S) O( 1 D) + h (557.7 nm) Na( 2 P) Na + h (589.0,589.6 nm) O( 1 D) O+ h (630.0,636.0 nm) N( 2 D) N+h (519.8,520.0 nm) Excited atoms and molecules quenched or radiate: O +,NO + O, N 2 O 2, OH NASA AISRP Meeting NASA Ames, April 6, 2005

From 85 km away From 2x10 km away 16 3) Why study the nightglow? Provides information on the chemistry, kinetics, and density distributions of species producing nightglow. => templates for atmospheric models Measurement of fundamental atomic parameters (wavelengths, spontaneous emission coefficients). Astronomical sky spectra offer high spectral resolution, dispersion, sensitivity, simultaneous bandwidth unavailable to aeronomers for the study of the nightglow. Nightglow: Emission from excited ions, atoms, and molecules that “relax”/radiate at night All-sky OH nightglow emission (Taylor, Pendelton, and Gardner, Adv. Space Res., 2001) 15 papers investigating the quiet night-time atmosphere, published by SRI investigators using astronomical spectra of the nightglow NASA AISRP Meeting NASA Ames, April 6, 2005

SRI Archives 2. Reduction Software Database Toolbox 3. NVAO Facility/Interactive Interface 16 Visualization/ Manipulation Browser Query Data 5) NVAO Design 1. Data Sources NASA AISRP Meeting NASA Ames, April 6, 2005

Planetary Nebula IC 418 CTIO Blanco 4 meter echelle spectrum nebular emission line nightglow emission line 5) NVAO Design – Data Sources Individual high spectral orders at resolution (  )= Observed range per image = nm NASA AISRP Meeting NASA Ames, April 6, 2005 Echelle Spectra:

SRI Archives PRESENT NVAO DATABASE CONTENTS AND STATUS All data fully extracted and wavelength calibrated to better than nm at 750 nm Small subset of ESI spectrograph data absolute flux calibrated HIRES ESI 5) NVAO Design – Data Sources NASA AISRP Meeting NASA Ames, April 6, 2005

5) NVAO Design: Data Sources SMOKA (Subaru) Archive: (Manua Kea, Hawaii) Telescopes: 8.2 meter, Okayama Obs meter Instruments: Faint Object Camera (long slit), HDS (echelle), HIDES (echelle) 5000 spectra from medium to high resolution instrumentation. Issac Newton Group (ING) Archive: (La Palma, Canary Islands) Telescopes: William Herschel 4.2 meter, Issac Newton 2.5 meter Instruments: OASIS, ISIS (long-slit/echellette), UES (echelle) Significant fraction of 430,000 total observations are spectra. European Southern Observatory (ESO) Archive: (La Silla, Paranal, Chile) Telescopes: VLT 4 x 8.2 meter, NTT 3.5 meter, 3.6 meter, 2.2 meter Instruments: FEROS (fiber echelle), UVES (fiber echelle), CES (fiber echelle) SPECTRA ARCHIVES Archives under development for GEMINI North and South (Mauna Kea, Chile) Keck Observatory (Mauna Kea), HET/McDonald Observatory (Texas) SRI Archives NASA AISRP Meeting NASA Ames, April 6, 2005

Spectra stored most often as “raw” files (FITS) direct as recorded from CCD No real time transfer of spectra from archives available Associated spectra for calibration also stored as raw files instrumental signature removal, detector biases and individual pixel responses determination, correction for CCD defects wavelength calibration, absolute intensity calibration 2. Reduction Software 5) NVAO Design: Reduction Software NASA AISRP Meeting NASA Ames, April 6, 2005

2. Reduction Software 5) NVAO Design: Reduction Software “Pipeline” (Mostly Automated) Calibration: Keck/HIRES and ESI:MAKEE (T. Barlow) VLT/UVES: Built into MIDAS (ESO) Full reduction and calibration to wavelength determination Full reduction to intensity calibration Manual Reduction and Calibration: Image Reduction and Analysis Facility (IRAF): National Optical Astronomical Observatories (NOAO) Custom written Perl and Fortran code using CFITSIO code (NASA Goddard – HEASARC) NASA AISRP Meeting NASA Ames, April 6, 2005

Database Attributes of sky spectra stored in MySQL database upon completion of their reduction and calibration Computes and sorts attributes by common aeronomic and astronomic Dst/Kp indices, shadow height, solar depression angle, right ascension, declination, moon brightness Browser Perl/CGI web form for forming a query to select spectra based upon common aeronomic and astronomic parameters: NASA AISRP Meeting NASA Ames, April 6, ) NVAO Design: Interactive Interface

Toolbox Visualization/ Manipulation Tools that operate on spectra selected from database by browser query: (written in Perl) => Peak detection, line profile fitting, intensity measurement => Line measurement collation by aeronomical parameter => Calculation of physical parameters from collections of line detections and measurements i.e. mesopausal temperature Manipulation of output data products from toolbox: (output spectra, line intensity measurements vs. physical parameters) for plotting or interactive measurement on-line (written in Perl, using PGPLOT) NASA AISRP Meeting NASA Ames, April 6, ) NVAO Design: Interactive Interface

NVAO will make available this spectra to the whole aeronomy/astronomy communities Build a Virtual Observatory: suite of analysis tools that allow users to perform "experiments" or ask "questions" of the data: => How do multiple mesopausal temperatures compare with time of night? => What trends exist between two features with time of night/season/ geographic location? => What else was going on when I was measuring a particular atmospheric parameter with another instrument (such as Na LIDAR)? Emphasize easy accesibility via interactive web tools: immediate “science” with minimal user effort (isolate reduction/ calibration details) NASA AISRP Meeting NASA Ames, April 6, 2005

BrowserDatabaseToolbox “Return a spectrum showing N( 2 D- 4 S) nm on June 3, 2000 at any time between UT 8-10 at Mauna Kea, HI (Keck)” Query: ASCII file (intensity vs. wavelength) Data: Sample Query #1: NASA AISRP Meeting NASA Ames, April 6, ) NVAO Design: Interactive Interface

BrowserDatabase Toolbox “Return a spectrum showing N( 2 D- 4 S) nm on June 3, 2000 at any time between UT 8-10 at Mauna Kea, HI (Keck) for interactive measurement” Query: Sample Query #2: Visualization/ Manipulation NASA AISRP Meeting NASA Ames, April 6, ) NVAO Design: Interactive Interface

BrowserDatabase Toolbox “Plot the mesospheric temperature from v=9 OH Meinel band system lines over all nights October 2000 from Mauna Kea, Hawaii (Keck)”. Query: Sample Query #3: Visualization/ Manipulation NASA AISRP Meeting NASA Ames, April 6, ) NVAO Design: Interactive Interface

Acquired additional data from Keck/HIRES, VLT/UVES, HET/HRS Acquired and adapting VLT/UVES pipeline for additional instruments Completed Basic tools (line detection/measurement) completed, some more advanced tools (temperature determination) also completed Simple interface for interacting with database/downloading ASCII spectrum files completed. Written Database Toolbox Visualization/ Manipulation Browser Data Sources Reduction Software NASA AISRP Meeting NASA Ames, April 6, ) NVAO Status

1) Get simplified browser/database interface on-line for downloading reduced spectra 2) Adapt pipelines (MAKEE and UVES) for use with potential archival spectrum sources 3) Translate display/data manipulation tools written in Perl to Javascript for incorporation into web interface 4) Develop more sophisticated query language and associated browser/database interface to allow more elaborate queries for science derivation NASA AISRP Meeting NASA Ames, April 6, ) NVAO Immediate/Long-Term Plans