Summer mesosphere temperature distribution from wide-angle polarization measurements of the twilight sky

The paper contains the results of wide-angle polarization camera (WAPC) measurements of the twilight sky background conducted in summer 2011 and 2012 at 55.2°N, 37.5°E, southwards from Moscow. The method of single scattering separation based on polarization data is suggested. The obtained components of scattering matrices show the domination of Rayleigh scattering in the mesosphere over the majority of observation time. It made possible to retrieve the altitude distribution of temperature in the mesosphere. The results are compared with the temperature data by TIMED/SABER and EOS Aura/MLS instruments averaged over the nearby dates and locations.