%0 Journal Article %T Observations of atomic deuterium in the mesosphere from ATLAS 1 with ALAE Instrument %+ Service d'aéronomie (SA) %+ Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy / Institut d'Aéronomie Spatiale de Belgique (BIRA-IASB) %+ Lunar and Planetary Laboratory [Tucson] (LPL) %A Bertaux, Jean-Loup %A Quémerais, Eric %A Goutail, Florence %A Kockarts, Gaston %A Sandel, Bill R. %< avec comité de lecture %@ 0094-8276 %J Geophysical Research Letters %I American Geophysical Union %V 20 %N 6 %P 507-510 %8 1993-03-19 %D 1993 %R 10.1029/93GL00077 %Z Physics [physics]/Physics [physics]/Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics [physics.ao-ph]Journal articles %X During the first ATLAS mission, the ALAE Lyman α spectrophotometer collected various measurements of hydrogen and deuterium atoms, from the mesosphere, the thermosphere, the exosphere and the interplanetary medium. In this paper is presented a preliminary analysis of some observations of atomic deuterium, which Lyman α emission is excited by resonance scattering of solar photons. Nadir measurements along the sunlit Earth part of the orbit show that the emission changes as a function of solar zenith angle. Comparison with a simple model shows that, from the shuttle altitude of 300 km and at low solar zenith angles, the line‐of‐sight probes atomic deuterium down to 80 km of altitude (where O 2 absorption is complete), whereas at angles from 60° to 90°, the mesospheric part of the emission progressively vanishes. Then, the remaining emission mainly consist of the thermospheric part (z ≥ 100 km). This type of observations provides a sounding of atomic deuterium at its peak production and concentration, and D atoms can be used as a proxy to H atoms (which cannot be observed from a satellite) in this particularly active region of the mesosphere. %G English %2 https://insu.hal.science/insu-02889811/document %2 https://insu.hal.science/insu-02889811/file/ark%20_67375_WNG-TN5LL6XQ-2.pdf %L insu-02889811 %U https://insu.hal.science/insu-02889811 %~ INSU %~ UPMC %~ CNRS %~ UVSQ %~ AERONOMIE %~ SORBONNE-UNIVERSITE %~ SU-TI %~ ALLIANCE-SU