The discussion explains two sources of noise that must be corrected for in satellite night-light data: moonlight and airglow. Airglow is described as the atmosphere glowing from precipitating electrons from the heliosphere interacting with charged particles and hydroxyl atmospheric chemistry, the same phenomenon behind auroras during storm events. The team had to build the theoretical framework for how these light sources interact with the night sky from scratch, since no prior research addressed it.
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The same airglow data that is noise for night-light mapping is valuable to heliophysicists, who use it to build early warnings for storm impacts on infrastructure like the power grid.
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This theoretical work is documented in what NASA calls an algorithm theoretical basis document, built because no one had written the theory on how lights interact with the night sky before.
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12:58>> Well uh so speaking of like you know preserving the data and presenting pristine data that's a big passion of yours. So I wanted to ask you just how difficult it is actually if you don't mind that we we we we like getting technical on this podcast because um you know the name is from first principles so we try to develop the process of how science is done rather than just the answers. I think the answers are certainly really cool right the fact that you can see um Muslim cities of Cairo and Aman uh fluctuating in brightness during Ramadan and it it like coincides with Eid. >> But I know where you're going with this. Do you know why it takes to get >> Exactly. Like it's a lot of work. A lot
13:38of work goes into convincing yourself that you're not being fooled because the easiest person to fool is yourself. So what I wanted to ask you um with this this is a figure from I think >> the theoretical basis document. >> Exactly. So >> which is NASA's speech for no one had he written the theory on understanding how lights interact with the sky at night since 2018. He had to create that theory from scratch. >> Exactly. So, so I wanted to ask you like so there's moonlight obviously in this figure. Um >> there's air glow. >> Yeah. Air glow is just the atmosphere glowing. >> Yes. From from precipitation electrons from the hemosphere. >> Oh wow. So interacting with
14:21>> and atmospheric chemistry happening. So every time there's a storm event you see aura >> and that becomes noise for us. But helopysicists love to go get those maps to do early warnings for potential impacts to infrastructure layer power grid. This the same data set.
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