Research Projects: NEMI

Night-time Emissions from the Mesosphere and Ionosphere (NEMI)

The EU-funded ALOMAR eARI (Enhanced Access to Research Infrastructure) programme has provided two so-called Hotel Payload (HotPay) rocket launches. The second hotel payload launch, HotPay 2, took place (after some delays) at Andøya Rocket Range on January 31, 2008.

Together with the Dept. of Meteorology of Stockholm University, and the Space Physics Group at the University of Oulu, SGO provided a joint instrument, NEMI (Night-time Emissions from the Mesosphere and Ionosphere) for the HotPay 2 rocket.

NEMI was a set of three photometers with filters centered at the N2+ first negative emission line at 391 nm for auroral activity, 500 nm for background and nitric oxide measurements, and the oxygen A-band line at 762 nm for retrieval of oxygen.

In the launch window of HotPay2, an international EISCAT and optical ground-based measurement campaign was organised. This campaign produced a wealth of observations of several interesting phenomena which are still being analysed. Some examples are polar mesospheric winter echoes and dayside auroral precipitation.

Partners in NEMI:

• Dept of Meteorology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
• Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory, University of Oulu, Sodankylä, Finland
• Space Physics Group, Dept of Physical Sciences, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland
• ALOMAR
• Andøya Rocket Range, Andenes, Norway

Participants in the optical-Eiscat-Heating campaign

• Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki, Finland
• Space and plasma physics group, Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Heating and optical observations
• Atmospheric Physics Laboratory, University College London, UK, Fabry-Perot interferometer and tristatic UHF wind measurements
• Dept. of Physics and Technology, University of Tromsø, Heating and optical observations
• Swedish Institute of Space Physics, and Space and Upper Atmospheric Science Group, NIPR, Japan: ALIS-Reimei conjunction measurements