A Reexamination of Lord Rayleigh's Data on the Airglow 5577 A[OI] Emission

Raylegh's published data on the airglow green line covering an entire sunspot cycle have been little used because of the manner of presentation. These data have been reexamined and the results for the different stations put on a common basis and converted to present-day units. The assumptions and constants used by Rayleigh in his absolute calibration have been carefully checked, with a resulting small change in the absolute intensity that he had reported. Since Rayleigh worked with wide bandpass filters, a discussion of current knowledge of the night-sky continuum and its correlation with the green line has also been included. (Author).