Colloquium Abstract - Kulkarni - 2025Nov07

November 7, 2025

11:00am Mountain

Shri Kulkarni (Caltech)

 

Metastable helium in the upper thermosphere 

 

Abstract

SPHEREx, a recently launched astronomy mission, detected a bright 1.083 micron emission feature in the commissioning data. The PI group attributed this feature to the He~I 1.0833 micron triplet line. In this seminar I review the physics and aeronomy of this well-known line of atmospheric origin. SPHEREx is in a dawn-dusk sun-synchronous polar orbit, circling the earth nearly 15 times a day and observing close to the terminator plane. With a height of 650 km, SPHEREx is located in the upper thermosphere that is dominated by atomic oxygen and helium. The He I line is a result of resonance scattering of solar photons by metastable helium atoms. It appears that SPHEREx has the capacity to provide a rich dataset (global, daily, and 2-minute cadence) of the column density of metastable helium in the upper thermosphere. As an example of this assertion, with data from just one orbit, the winter helium bulge was readily seen. Helium in the thermosphere is of considerable interest to operators of low-earth orbiting (LEO) satellites, since drag in the thermosphere is the primary cause of the decay of these satellites. SPHEREx, along with on-going ground-based studies (passive NIR spectroscopy, lidar, incoherent scatter radar), is poised to contribute to this topic.


Local Host: Dale Frail

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