Dataset of night-time emissions of the Earth in the near UV range (290-430 nm), with 6.3 km resolution, in the latitude range -51.6 +51.6 degrees, acquired on board the International Space Station with the Mini-EUSO detector
Description
The data presented here are related to the research paper entitled “Observation of night-time emissions of the Earth in the near UV range from the International Space Station with the Mini-EUSO detector” (Remote Sensing of Environment, Volume 284, January 2023, 113336, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2022.113336). The data have been acquired with the Mini-EUSO detector, an UV telescope operating in the range 290-430 nm and located inside the International Space Station. The detector was launched in August 2019, and it has started operations from the nadir-facing UV transparent window in the Russian Zvezda module in October 2019. The data presented here refer to 32 sessions acquired between 2019-11-19 and 2021-05-06. The instrument consists of a Fresnel-lens optical system and a focal surface composed of 36 Multi-Anode Photomultiplier tubes, each with 64 channels, for a total of 2304 channels with single photon counting sensitivity. The telescope, with a square field-of-view of 44°, has a spatial resolution on the Earth surface of 6.3 km and saves triggered transient phenomena with a sampling rate of 2.5 μs and 320 μs. The telescope also operated in continuous acquisition at a 40.96 ms scale. We present here large-area night-time UV maps obtained processing the 40.96 ms data, taking averages over regions of some specific geographical areas (e.g., Europe, North America). Data are binned into 0.1° × 0.1° or 0.05° × 0.05° cells (depending on the scale of the map) over the Earth’s surface. Data are made available in the form of tables (latitude, longitude, counts) and kmz files (containing the .png images).