OBSERVATIONS OF THE MOON BY THE GLOBAL OZONE MONITORING EXPERIMENT - RADIOMETRIC CALIBRATION AND LUNAR ALBEDO

The Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) is a new instrument, whi ch was launched aboard the second European Remoting Sensing satellite ESA-ERS2 in 1995. For its long-term radiometric and spectral calibrati on the GOME observes the sun and less frequently the moon on a regular basis. These measurements of the lunar radiance and solar irradiance have been used in a study to determine, for the first time to the auth ors' knowledge, the geometric lunar albedo from 240 to 800 nm at high spectral resolution from space. For a waning moon there is good agreem ent with ground-based measurements in the visible region and with rece nt space-based measurements in the ultraviolet region. In addition, th e use of these measurements for the characterization of in-orbit degra dation of instruments operating in this spectral region has been adequ ately demonstrated. (C) 1998 Optical Society of America. OCIS codes: 2 80.0280, 140.4640, 120.5630, 350.1270.