The Martian oxygen green line dayglow: response to solar activity

[en] The Ultraviolet and Visible Spectrometer (UVIS) instrument of the Nadir and Occultation for MArs Discovery (NOMAD) aboard the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) observes the Martian dayglow at 557.7 nm, which corresponds to the oxygen green line emission. Soret et al. (2022) analyzed a full Martian year of dayside limb observations and implied that some variability could be observed in both the altitude and intensity of the green dayglow. In this work, we take advantage of three Martian years of observations to analyze the evolution of the peak brightness and peak altitude of the oxygen green line emission during a period of increasing solar activity. We show that the limb brightness can change by ~70 % from one Martian year to the other. The green line brightness is highly correlated with both seasonal and solar activity effects. The brightest observations of the oxygen green line occur near perihelion and when solar insolation is highest. However, we observe that the peak altitude is highly correlated with season (maximum at perihelion) but it does not show a dependence on solar activity. Finally, we compare the evolution of the green line peak altitude with that of the 0.39-µbar pressure level provided by the Mars Climate Database (MCD) v6.1 and show that the calculated CO2 density can be overestimated by a factor of 2, especially in the northern hemisphere. We conclude that dayside observations of the green line emission are a powerful tool to constrain global circulation models and remotely monitor the dynamics of the Mars atmosphere over t ime and season in the 70-100 km region.

Research Center/Unit :

STAR - Space sciences, Technologies and Astrophysics Research - ULiège

Disciplines :

Space science, astronomy & astrophysics

Author, co-author :

Soret, Lauriane ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département d'astrophysique, géophysique et océanographie (AGO) > Labo de physique atmosphérique et planétaire (LPAP) ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Unités de recherche interfacultaires > Space sciences, Technologies and Astrophysics Research (STAR)

Robin, H.

Gérard, Jean-Claude ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département d'astrophysique, géophysique et océanographie (AGO) > Labo de physique atmosphérique et planétaire (LPAP)

Gkouvelis, L.

Thomas, I.

Ristic, B.

Willame, Y.

Hubert, Benoît ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département d'astrophysique, géophysique et océanographie (AGO) > Labo de physique atmosphérique et planétaire (LPAP)

Vandaele, A.C.

Mason, J.P.

Daerden, F.

Patel, M.R.

Language :

English

Title :

The Martian oxygen green line dayglow: response to solar activity

Publication date :

June 2025

Journal title :

Icarus

ISSN :

0019-1035

eISSN :

1090-2643

Publisher :

Elsevier

Pages :

116707

Peer reviewed :

Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi

Additional URL :

https://api.elsevier.com/content/article/PII:S0019103525002556?httpAccept=text/xml

Available on ORBi :

since 18 June 2025

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