A ROCKET TOMOGRAPHY MEASUREMENT OF THE N-2(+) 3914-A EMISSION RATES WITHIN AN AURORAL ARC

A rocket tomography experiment designed to measure the two-dimensional distribution of the N2+ 3914 angstrom volume emission rates within an auroral arc is described. A simple filter photometer on board a sounding rocket, which was launched during the ARIES auroral campaign, was used to measure the 3914 angstrom auroral brightnesses at elevation angles ranging from 0-degrees to 360-degrees in the plane of the rocket trajectory. The measured auroral brightnesses have been tomographically inverted to recover the local 3914 angstrom volume emission rates as a function of both altitude and latitude within the arc. The tomographic inversion procedure, which is based upon a maximum probability algebraic reconstruction approach, is described and the implications of the results for studies of auroral excitation processes are briefly discussed.