The Raman spectrum of the atmosphere at 23km

Anticipating, alleviating, and correcting for the impact of this self-inflicted contamination requires a detailed knowledge of the pure-rotational and rotational-vibrational spectrum of the molecules in our atmosphere. We present a 15.3hr-deep combined spectrum of the 4LGSF's 589nm=509THz sodium laser beams of Paranal observatory, acquired with the ESPRESSO spectrograph at a resolution {lambda}/{Delta}{lambda}{cong.to}140000{cong.to}0.12cm^-1^ and an altitude of 23km above mean sea level.

We identify 865 Raman lines over the spectral range of [3770; 7900]{AA}~[+9540;-4315]cm^-1^, with relative intensities spanning ~5 orders of magnitudes. These lines are associated to the most abundant molecules of dry air, including their isotopes: ^14^N^14^N, ^14^N^15^N, ^16^O^16^O, ^16^O^17^O, ^16^O^18^O, and ^14^C^16^O^16^O. The signal-to-noise of these observations implies that professional observatories can treat the resulting catalogue of Raman lines as exhaustive (for the detected molecules, over the observed Raman shift range) for the purpose of predicting/correcting/exploiting Raman lines in astronomical data.