PALACE v1.0: Paranal Airglow Line  And Continuum Emission model

Noll, Stefan; Schmidt, Carsten; Hannawald, Patrick; Kausch, Wolfgang; Kimeswenger, Stefan

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-4353-2025

Articles | Volume 18, issue 14

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-4353-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-4353-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 14

Model description paper

|

21 Jul 2025

Model description paper |

| 21 Jul 2025

PALACE v1.0: Paranal Airglow Line And Continuum Emission model

Stefan Noll, Carsten Schmidt, Patrick Hannawald, Wolfgang Kausch, and Stefan Kimeswenger

Data sets

Paranal Airglow Line And Continuum Emission (PALACE) model: data and code of v1.0 Stefan Noll et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14064022

Data for the paper "Climatologies of various OH lines from about 90,000 X-shooter spectra'' Stefan Noll et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7826060

Measurements and simulations of the nightglow continuum at Cerro Paranal Stefan Noll et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8335836

Short summary

Non-thermal emission from chemical reactions in the Earth's middle und upper atmosphere strongly contributes to the brightness of the night sky below about 2.3 µm. The new Paranal Airglow Line And Continuum Emission model calculates the emission spectrum and its variability with an unprecedented accuracy. Relying on a large spectroscopic data set from astronomical spectrographs and theoretical molecular/atomic data, this model is valuable for airglow research and astronomical observatories.