Extraction of motion parameters of gravity-wave structures from all-sky OH image sequences

We describe the application of a motion model to OH images collected by CCD cameras during three nights in February and April 1995 (3 February, 1 April, and 4 April) at the StarFire Optical Range, New Mexico. We used the instrument to take broadband images of OH Meinel bands at an altitude of 87 km to record the footprints of dynamics created by acoustic gravity waves in the mesosphere. We used the motion model to extract the velocity of the gravity waves from the images. The results of a total of 181 observations with the motion model were compared with a total of 189 observations obtained by manual estimation. We used these results to extract the intrinsic properties of the gravity waves. The mean intrinsic velocity for the three nights under consideration was 61.5 +/- 17.0 m/s with the motion model and 61.1 +/- 23.3 m/s with manual estimation.