Observation of ELVES with Mini-EUSO telescope on board the International Space Station

Abstract

Mini-EUSO is a detector observing the Earth in the ultraviolet band from the International Space Station through a nadir-facing window, transparent to the UV radiation, in the Russian Zvezda module. Mini-EUSO main detector consists in an optical system with two Fresnel lenses and a focal surface composed of an array of 36 Hamamatsu Multi-Anode Photo-Multiplier tubes, for a total of 2304 pixels, with single photon counting sensitivity. The telescope also contains two ancillary cameras, in the near infrared and visible ranges, to complement measurements in these bandwidths. The instrument has a field of view of 44 degrees, a spatial resolution of about 6.3 km on the Earth surface and of about 4.7 km on the ionosphere. The telescope detects UV emissions of cosmic, atmospheric and terrestrial origin on different time scales, from a few 𝜇s upwards. On the fastest timescale of 2.5 𝜇s, Mini-EUSO is able to observe atmospheric phenomena as Transient Luminous Events and in particular the ELVES, which take place when an electromagnetic wave generated by intra-cloud lightning interacts with the ionosphere, ionizing it and producing apparently superluminal expanding rings of several 100 km and lasting about 100 𝜇s. These highly energetic fast events have been observed to be produced in conjunction also with Terrestrial Gamma-Ray Flashes and therefore a detailed study of their characteristics (speed, radius, energy ...) is of crucial importance for the understanding of these phenomena. In this paper we present the observational capabilities of ELVE detection by Mini-EUSO and specifically the reconstruction and study of ELVE characteristics.