Faculty

Lyle Broadfoot Senior Research Scientist Planetary atmospheres Ph.D., 1963, Saskatchewan Sonett  #162 621-4303 RESEARCH INTERESTS Dr. Broadfoot heads a research program in planetary atmospheric studies. New data from the Earth's atmosphere has been gathered with an instrument, GLO, the Arizona Airglow Experiment, which was flown on the Space Shuttle several times, the most recent being on STS-85 in August, 1997. The Earth atmosphere data were gathered to make comparisons of observed atmospheric conditions with atmospheric models that have been developed by several theoretical groups. Both dayglow and nightglow data were acquired along the Shuttle orbit. Although modeling of the dayglow atmosphere has been extensive observational data has been sparse. The data is unique since it is a complete record of atmospheric conditions from sun up to sun down and was obtained from 24 contiguous altitude levels in the atmosphere. Also the data covers a broad spectral range giving simultaneous measurements of all of the prominent nitrogen, oxygen, metallic ion, etc. from a single column of gas through the atmosphere. A second part of the flight program involves telescopic observations of the Jovian planetary system. Of particular interest is the Io Plasma Torus. It is large and can be viewed as a single entity from Earth. The observations complement the measurements made from the Voyager and Galileo spacecraft at Jupiter. A third part of the program involves development of remote sensing instrumentation for deployment on the International Space Station.