Project Summary Samson/ATM-9410716 The purpose of this research is to investigate the interaction of solar radiation with a planetary atmosphere and to provide absolute cross sections for each of the specific interaction processes as a function of wavelength. The results of solar radiation incident upon a planet's atmosphere depend critically on the wavelength of solar radiation: while Rayleigh scattering of the visible light causes a blue sky, more energetic radiation can cause dissociation, ionization, and dissociative ionization of the atmospheric molecules. Modified components of a planetary atmosphere may react with the ambient species to form a new source of molecules in the atmosphere, while the results of ionization produce the atmosphere.
