Observations of the 10-μm Natural Laser Emission From the Mesospheres of Mars and Venus

Nonthermal emission occurs in the cores of the 9.4- and 10.4-μm CO2 bands on Mars, and has been recently identified as a natural atmospheric laser. This paper presents observations of the total flux and center-to-limb dependence of this emission for Mars and Venus. The emission is believed to be excited by absorption of solar flux in the near-ir CO2 bands, followed by collisional transfer to the 00°1 state of CO2. A comparison is made between the observations and a detailed theoretical model based on this mechanism. It is found that the theoretical model successfully reproduces the observed center-to-limb dependence of this emission, to within the limits imposed by the spatial resolution of the observations. A comparison is also made between the observed fluxes and the predictions of the theoretical models. The observed flux from Mars agrees closely with the prediction of the model; the flux observed from Venus is 74% of the flux predicted by the model. This emission is utilized to obtain the kinetic temperatures of the Martian and Venusian mesospheres. For Mars near 70 km altitude, a rotational temperature analysis using five lines gives T = 135 ± 20°K. The frequency width of the emission is also analyzed to derive a temperature of 126 ± 6°K. In the case of the Venusian mesosphere near 109 km, the frequency width of the emission gives T = 204 ± 10°K.