Unified Abstract Files (Combined AE Data) from Atmosphere Explorers (AE-C, AE-D, and AE-E - Available from NSSDC

The following models are included on the CD-ROM: the International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) 1994, the COSPAR International Reference Atmosphere (CIRA) 1986, the Mass Spectrometer and Incoherent Scatter (MSIS) thermospheric model 1986, the MSIS Extended [down to ground level] (MSISE) model 1990, the Horizontal Wind Model (HWM) 1993, the Tobiska solar EUV model, the International Geomagnetic Reference Field (IGRF) 1945-1995, and the GEO_CGM conversion software from geographic to corrected geomagnetic coordinates and vice versa.

The CD contains README and DOC files describing the data, the data formats, and the models. Also included are the experiment/data descriptions provided by the respective PI teams and the satellite/experiment brief descriptions from NSSDC's Master Catalog. In addition the CD contains a 150 page listing of scientific papers based on AE data (ordered by experiment and name of first author).

Retrieval and visualization software is available for this CD-ROM (NSSDC ID: 73-101A-00G, 75-096A-00G, or 75-107A-00G). The software is `menu driven' and was developed for an MS-DOS environment. The user can create a subset of the data by specifying any combination of the AE parameters (experiment and orbit data) and IRI/MSIS model parameters and by specifying a desired time interval.

After the user has made her/his selection an ASCII file holding the requested data will be created. A companion file will describe the format of the new ASCII data file. The selected data can be also displayed graphically in a series of plot panels.

There are self-explanatory scale and display options including also display in a log-scale and a selection of different colors. The MS-DOS software can be obtained from NSSDC on floppy disk or can be retrieved from NSSDC's anonymous ftp site at nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov in directory CDROM/Software/DOS. All necessary files are included in the self-extracting file AE_Z.EXE.

Geophysical parameters measured include: the nitric oxide (NO) scale height at the spacecraft's altitude, the NO density at that altitude, the NO density at 150 km, the maximum NO density observed during a given limb scan, the altitude at which this maximum occurs, the electron temperature, the electron and ion density, and the satellite potential, the concentrations of the neutral and ion species at satellite altitude, neutral atmosphere density, winds, photoelectron spectra, ion drift velocities, visible airglow intensity measurements, EUV atmospheric absorption data, total energy flux for electrons and ions, and atmospheric temperature.