Mercury exosphere model output for meteoroid impact events

The Ultraviolet and Visible Spectrometer (UVVS) on the MESSENGER spacecraft observed three large transient events on Mercury’s nightside “tail,” during which exospheric brightness increased by an order of magnitude. UVVS observed enhancements of atomic sodium vapor, and, in one event, atomic sodium, magnesium and calcium. Meteoroid impacts are the most likely source given that the events can be simulated with instantaneous injections of vapor. Models for the three events are included in an attached ASCII file along with the original observations. The data consists of atomic emission time series recorded by the UVVS as its sightline was scanned back and forth across Mercury's nightside. Individual data points consist of UTC observation time and radiance in units of kilorayleighs. Each event is labeled by its atomic species and year of occurrence (2011, 2012, or 2013). The code for that produced the impactor model is available here. The work is discussed in a submitted journal article. We also include steady-state exosphere models for the three events in another ASCII file. The code that produced the steady-state models is available here. The steady-state files include the original UVVS data. More information on the original data is available on the NASA Planetary Data System with the data product ID MESS-E/V/H-MASCS-4-UVVS-DDR-V1.0.