  A near-ultraviolet (NUV) spectrograph (320-460 nm) was flown on the EXL98
aircraft sprite observation campaign during July 1998. In this wavelength range
video rate (60 fields/sec) spectrographic observations found the NUV/blue
emissions to be predominantly N2 (2PG). The negligible level of N2+ (1NG)
present in the spectrum is confirmed by observations of a co-aligned, narrowly
filtered 427.8 nm imager and is in agreement with previous ground-based
filtered photometer observations. The synthetic spectral fit to the
observations indicates a characteristic energy of ~1.8 eV, in agreement with
our other NUV observations.
