First measurements of the airglow emissions from Kolhapur using an in-house developed Fabry–Perot interferometer

Abstract

First-time airglow observations of the nighttime thermospheric wind from an in-house developed ground-based Fabry–Perot Interferometer are recorded from the Kolhapur location of India. This was the first attempt to build such an instrument, and thus the quality of the data recorded in the field is satisfactory. The instrument has been thoroughly calibrated in the laboratory, and the accuracy of the important parameter finesse of the etalon is found to be ≈94% in agreement with the value supplied by the manufacturer. The airglow observations from the field indicate that the vertical wind observed looking toward Zenith over the course of the night is zero, ensuring a 100% accuracy. However, the temperature measurements were found to be approximately 30% in agreement with the measurements repoted in literature. To improve this measurement, improvements in the optical design need to be made. The paper concludes with conclusions and a brief idea of the proposed improvisations in the design.