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

Data collected by the Atmosphere Explorer C, D and E satellites are provided on
one CD-ROM. The CD also includes data-related atmospheric/ionospheric/
magnetospheric models and software. The data represent the Unified Abstract
(UA) 15-sec time resolution format as original compiled by the AE team covering
the time period from December 16, 1973 to June 6, 1981. The UA data set
includes measurements of neutral and charged particle densities, temperatures,
and velocities, of airglow emissions and of photoelectron fluxes. Also included
on the CD are solar EUV data and reference spectra from the AE EUV spectrometer
(not included in UA). In addition the CD contains neutral density data deduced
from the AE measurements as provided by A. Hedin (GSFC). 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.