Virginia TechGordley, Larry L.Burton, J.Marshall, B. T.McHugh, M.Deaver, L.Nelsen, J.Russell, James M. IIIBailey, Scott M.2014-04-042014-04-042009-09-01Larry Gordley, John Burton, Benjamin T. Marshall, Martin McHugh, Lance Deaver, Joel Nelsen, James M. Russell, and Scott Bailey, "High precision refraction measurements by solar imaging during occultation: results from SOFIE," Appl. Opt. 48, 4814-4825 (2009). doi: 10.1364/AO.48.0048141559-128Xhttp://hdl.handle.net/10919/46912A new method for measuring atmospheric refraction angles is presented, with in-orbit measurements demonstrating a precision of +/-0.02 arcsec (+/-0.1 mu rad). Key advantages of the method are the following: (1) Simultaneous observation of two celestial points during occultation (i.e., top and bottom edges of the solar image) eliminates error from instrument attitude uncertainty. (2) The refraction angle is primarily a normalized difference measurement, causing only scale error, not absolute error. (3) A large number of detector pixels are used in the edge location by fitting to a known edge shape. The resulting refraction angle measurements allow temperature sounding up to the lower mesosphere. (C) 2009 Optical Society of Americaapplication/pdfenIn CopyrightAtmosphereInversionArticle - Refereedhttp://www.opticsinfobase.org/ao/abstract.cfm?URI=ao-48-25-4814https://doi.org/10.1364/AO.48.004814