Vibrational populations of O₂(<i>A</i>³Σ_<i>u</i>⁺) and synthetic spectra of the Herzberg bands in the night airglow

Abstract

The relative vibrational populations of the O2 (A ³Σu+) state in the nightglow have been determined for 0 < υ′ ≤ 10 by matching synthetic spectra of the Herzberg bands (A ³Σu+ — X ³Σg−) to various published spectrograms. The synthetic spectra of the ‘pure’ Herzberg bands obtained from this procedure are given at resolutions ranging from 1 A to 25 A.