Christoph Franzen

AS Atmospheric Sciences

The 2016 Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Award is awarded to Christoph Franzen for the poster/PICO entitled:

Single vs multi-level quenching of the hydroxyl airglow (Franzen, C.; Espy, P. J.; Hibbins, R; Djupvik, A. A.)

Click here to download the poster/PICO file.

Christoph Franzen is a first year PhD-student at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway, working with the Birkeland Centre for Space Science. In his research, he utilizes archived astronomical spectroscopic data from the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) to look at the Meinel band hydroxyl lines, which are present as background in astronomical imagery. With his work, he aims to quantify the hydroxyl radiation in the Mesosphere and Lower Thermosphere region (MLT) and to quantify the temporal and spatial variations of the background radiation for the NOT. In the poster, Christoph Franzen showed a method to quantify quenching probabilities of the rotationally exited hydroxyl in the MLT. Specifically, he examined the ratio of sudden death to stepwise quenching from the vibrational level v’=9. This result can have an important impact on future modelling studies of atmospheric hydroxyl.