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SPACECRAFT BASED STUDIES OF TRANSIENT LUMINOUS EVENTS

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Sprites, Elves and Intense Lightning Discharges

Abstract

The Imager of Sprites and Upper Atmospheric Lightning (ISUAL) is a scienti fic payload on Taiwan’s FORMOSAT-2 (previously known as ROCSAT-2) that provides new observations of transient luminous events (TLEs) from space. The ISUAL project is an international collaboration between the National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan, Tohoku University, Japan and the instrument development team from the University of California, Berkeley. The project was supported by the National Space Program Office in Taiwan. The ISUAL payload includes a visible wavelength intensified CCD imager, a boresighted six wavelength spectrophotometer, and a two channel Array Photometer (AP) with 16 vertically spaced horizontally wide sensitive regions. The imager is equipped with 5 selectable filters on a filter wheel and a 6th open position. The spectrophotometer contains six filter photometer channels, their bandpasses ranging from the far ultraviolet to the near infrared regions. The two channel AP is fitted with broadband blue and red filters.

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Mende, S.B. et al. (2006). SPACECRAFT BASED STUDIES OF TRANSIENT LUMINOUS EVENTS. In: FĂĽllekrug, M., Mareev, E.A., Rycroft, M.J. (eds) Sprites, Elves and Intense Lightning Discharges. NATO Science Series II: Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, vol 225. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4629-4_6

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