Investigation of vehicle glow in the far ultraviolet

To data, all vehicle glow observations have been conducted in the visible and near infrared wavelength regions. As the Space Telescope's wavelength coverage extends to the far ultraviolet range and current plasma theory of the spacecraft glow phenomena predicts bright glow intensities, a study of the ram glow effects in the 800-1400 angstrom region was undertaken. The data were collected between March 21-28, 1979, from 600 km altitude near local midnight by the University of California, Berkeley's extreme ultraviolet spectrometer on board the polar orbiting STP78-1 satellite. Data from several nighttime orbits obtained outside the South Atlantic Anomaly region and within + or - 30 deg magnetic latitude range were separated into forward (south viewing) and backward (north viewing) bins. Each of these binds was subdivided into three directional categories: (1) up (zenith angles 30-80 deg), (2) side (zenith angles 80-100 deg), and (3) down (zenith angles 120-150 deg). The maximum ram glow effects are expected in the side viewing directions. Our data include possible effects of ram glow signatures in the 800-1400 angstrom wavelength region.