Auroral Radiance Modeling with SAMM2

This paper presents results that demonstrate the auroral modeling capabilities of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) SAMM2 (SHARC And MODTRAN® Merged 2) radiance code. A scene generation capability is obtained by coupling SAMM2 with a recently developed Clutter Region Atmosphere and Scene Module (CRASMO), which provides an approach for rapid generation of time sequences and images of radiance clutter. Modeled results will be compared to data collected by the Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX)1 in the IR and UV-visible spectral regions during an auroral event on November 10, 1996. The paper is organized as follows. We first present a brief history of the AFRL SHARC/SAMM codes, leading up to the current version, SAMM2 v.2. The SAMM2 UV-visible auroral kinetic model will then be described, followed by a comparison of modeled results to the MSX data.