The NASA Global‐scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) mission has flown an ultraviolet‐imaging spectrograph on SES‐14, a communications satellite in geostationary orbit at 47.5°W longitude. That instrument observes the Earth's far ultraviolet (FUV) airglow at ~134–162 nm using two identical channels. The observations performed include limb scans, stellar occultations, and images of the sunlit and nightside disk from 6:10 to 00:40 universal time each day. Initial analyses reveal interesting and unexpected results as well as the potential for further studies of the Earth's thermosphere‐ionosphere system and its responses to solar‐geomagnetic forcing and atmospheric dynamics. Thermospheric composition ratios for major constituents, O and N₂, temperatures near 160 km, and exospheric temperatures are retrieved from the daytime observations. Molecular oxygen (O₂) densities are measured using stellar occultations. At night, emission from radiative recombination in the ionospheric F region is used to quantify ionospheric density variations in the equatorial ionization anomaly (EIA). Regions of depleted F region electron density are frequently evident, even during the current solar minimum. These depletions are caused by the “plasma fountain effect” and are associated with the instabilities, scintillations, or “spread F ” seen in other types of observations, and GOLD makes unique observations for their study.

中文翻译：

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金团的初步观察

美国国家航空航天局（NASA）的全球肢体和磁盘观测（GOLD）任务是在经度为47.5°W的对地静止轨道上的通信卫星SES-14上飞行紫外成像光谱仪。该仪器使用两个相同的通道观测〜134–162 nm处的地球远紫外（FUV）气辉。每天进行的观察包括肢体扫描，恒星掩星以及每天6:10到00:40普遍时间的日照和夜盘图像。初步分析显示出有趣且出乎意料的结果，以及进一步研究地球热电离层系统及其对太阳地磁强迫和大气动力学的响应的潜力。主要成分O和N _2的热层组成比，160 km附近的温度和大气温度是从白天的观测中获取的。使用恒星掩星法测量分子氧（O ₂）密度。到了晚上，电离层F区域中的辐射复合产生的发射用于量化赤道电离异常（EIA）中的电离层密度变化。即使在当前的太阳极小时期，耗尽的F区电子密度区域也常常很明显。这些消耗是由“等离子体喷泉效应”引起的，并且与其他类型的观测中所看到的不稳定性，闪烁或“展布F ”有关，GOLD为他们的研究提供了独特的观测。