TOPSIDE OBSERVATION OF GRAVITY-WAVES

The AEPI (Atmospheric Emissions Photometric Imager) experiment on the ATLAS-1 shuttle mission (launched March 24, 1992) imaged the earth nig ht airglow emission in the O2 Atmospheric (0,0) bands, at 762.0 nm. Ea rthward views of O2 A bands show structure from gravity waves which ex hibit extended horizontal structure with horizontal wavelengths on the order of 50-100 km. These observations of the O2 A (0,0) bands are pa rticularly interesting since in this wavelength the lower atmosphere a bsorbs all the earth-reflected emissions and most of the spectrally di ffuse backgrounds. Herein we present observations of gravity waves usi ng a topside airglow imaging technique.