Photometric Calibration of the Barium Cloud Image in a Space Active Experiment: Determining the Release Efficiency

The barium release experiment is an effective method to explore the near-earth environment and to study all kinds of space physics processes. The first space barium release experiment in China was successfully carried out by a sounding rocket on April 5, 2013. This work is devoted to calculating the release efficiency of the barium release by analyzing the optical image observed during the experiment. First, we present a method to calibrate the images grey value of barium cloud with the reference stars to obtain the radiant fluxes at different moments. Then the release efficiency is obtained by a curve fitting with the theoretical evolution model of barium cloud. The calculated result is basically consistent with the test value on ground.