OBSERVATIONS OF TERRESTRIAL FAR UV EMISSIONS BY THE FAUST TELESCOPE

The FAUST telescope was developed to provide precise photometry of extended astronomical objects in the 1400-1800 angstrom wavelength interval, and has a field of view of 7.6-degrees and an angular resolution of 2 arc minutes. It was carried into orbit by the space shuttle Atlantis in March 1992 as part of the ATLAS-1 mission. During this flight, on several occasions it was pointed at the Earth to provide an estimate of the terrestrial nightglow, auroral and shuttleglow emissions. Our preliminary findings on these non-astronomical measurements are that auroral precipitation activity dominates in the high magnetic latitude, and that outside the high magnetic latitude region we consistently see diffuse emission of .005 to .02 Rayleighs/angstrom, slowly varying over the nightside. We explore interpretations of this emission as terrestrial nightglow and shuttle-glow, and find a possible explanation as NO chemiluminescent nightglow.