Spectral Analysis of High-Energy Radiation Events Observed during the ALOFT 2023 Campaign
- 1University of Bergen, Birkeland Centre for Space Science, Hard Radiation group , Bergen, Norway (david.sarria.89@gmail.com)
- 2NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, USA
- 3U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Washington DC, USA
- 4Department of Atmospheric Science, Earth System Science Center, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, USA
- 5NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, USA
- *A full list of authors appears at the end of the abstract
The Airborne Lighting Observatory for FEGS and TGFs (ALOFT) is equipped with a comprehensive set of instruments on-board a NASA ER-2 research aircraft for observing Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes (TGFs) and gamma-ray glows from thunderclouds. The ER-2 research aircraft flew at about 20 km altitude, above thunderstorms, from July 1st to July 30th, 2023, for a total flight time of about 60 hours. The onboard instrument suite comprised several X/gamma-ray detectors, which spanned a dynamic range of four orders of magnitude in flux and covered the entire energy spectrum associated with the gamma-ray transients.
During the campaign, we observed over 130 short gamma-ray transients, along with hundreds of gamma-ray glows. Several of these detections consisted of thousands of photon counts, allowing precise and unprecedented spectral analyses.
In this study, we present a comprehensive spectral analysis of various events using a forward modeling technique and Monte-Carlo simulations. This approach enables us to constrain the source characteristics of these events, including their source energy spectrum, production altitude and offset, spatial extension, and the brightness (fluence) of the source RREA electrons.
N. Østgaard1, T. Lang 2, M. Marisaldi1, J. E. Grove4, M. Quick 2, H. Christian 3, C. Schultz2, R. Blakeslee2, I. Adams6, R. Kroodsma6, G. Heymsfield6, A. Mezentsev1, D. Sarria1, I. Bjørg Engeland 1, A. Fuglestad 1, N. Lehtinen1, K. Ullaland1, S. Yang1, B. Hasan Qureshi1, J. Søndergaard1, B. Husa1, D. Walker3, D. Shy4, M. Bateman3, D. Mach13, P. Bitzer3, M. Fullekrug7, M. Cohen8, M. Stanley9, S. Cummer10, J. Montanya11, M. Pazos12, C. Velosa5, O. van der Velde11, Y. Pu10, P. Krehbiel9, J. A. Roncancio11, J. A. Lopez11, M. Urbani 11, A. Santos 5 1 Department of Physics and Technology, University of Bergen, Norway 2 NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, USA 3 Department of Atmospheric Science, Earth System Science Center, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, USA 4 U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Washington DC, USA 5 Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Columbia 6 NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, USA 7 University of Bath, UK 8 Georgia Institute of Technology, USA 9 New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, USA 10 Duke University, USA 11 Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Spain 12 Instituto de Ciencias de la Atmosfera y Cambio Climatico, UNAM, Mexico 13 Universities Space Research Association, Huntsville, Alabama, USA
How to cite: Sarria, D., Østgaard, N., Marisaldi, M., Lang, T., Grove, E., Quick, M., Christian, H., Schultz, C., Blakeslee, R., Adams, I., Kroodsma, R., Heymsfield, G., Mezentsev, A., Bjørg Engeland, I., Fuglestad, A., Lehtinen, N., Ullaland, K., Yang, S., Hasan Quresh, B., and Søndergaard, J. and the ALOFT Team: Spectral Analysis of High-Energy Radiation Events Observed during the ALOFT 2023 Campaign, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-5346, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-5346, 2024.
