A model of foreground emission in UV using GALEX deep observations

Foreground emission, mainly airglow and zodiacal light, is a significant contributor in an ultraviolet observation especially from low earth orbit. Its careful estimation and removal are tedious yet unavoidable processes in the study of diffuse UV radiation and by exten-sion interstellar dust studies. Our analysis of deep GALEX observations show that airglow is not only a function of Sun angle but also a strong function of Solar activity at the time of observation. We present here an empirical model of airglow emission, derived from GALEX deep observations, as a function of 10.7 cm Solar flux and Sun angle. We obtained the model by training machine learning models on the data using a variant of the regression algorithm that is both resilient toward outlier data and sensitive to the complexities of the provided data. Our model predictions across various observations show no loss in generalization as well as good agreement with the observed values. We find that the total airglow in an observation is the sum of a baseline part (AGc) that depends on the Solar flux and Sun angle, and a variable part (AGv) that depends on the Sun angle and the time of observation with respect to local midnight. We also find that the total airglow can vary between 85 - 390 photon units in FUV and 80 - 465 photon units in NUV.(c) 2022 COSPAR. Published Elsevier B.V. All reserved.

Automated summary

In this article, we present an empirical model of airglow emission derived from deep GALEX observations, which correlates with solar activity and solar angle. Using machine learning models, we find that the total airglow consists of a baseline part and a variable part, which are determined by solar angle, solar flux, and observation time.