Airglow Imagery
Photograph
How many of these can you find in this photograph: an aurora, airglow, one of the oldest impact craters on the Earth, snow and ice, stars, city lights, and part of the International Space Station? Most of these can be identified by their distinctive colors. The aurora here appears green at the bottom, red at the top, and is visible across the left of image. Airglow appears orange and can be seen hovering over the curve of the Earth. The circular Manicouagan Crater in Canada, about 100 kilometers across and 200 million years old, is visible toward the lower right and is covered in white snow and ice. Stars, light in color, dot the dark background of space. City lights appear a bright yellow and dot the landscape. Finally, across the top, part of the International Space Station (ISS) appears mostly tan. This image was taken from the ISS in 2012.
Credit: NASA
Photograph
If you could circle the Earth aboard the International Space Station, what might you see? Some amazing vistas, one of which was captured in this breathtaking picture in mid-2015. First, visible at the top, are parts of the space station itself including solar panels. Just below the station is the band of our Milky Way Galaxy, glowing with the combined light of billions of stars, but dimmed in patches by filaments of dark dust. The band of red light just below the Milky Way is airglow -- Earth's atmosphere excited by the Sun and glowing in specific colors of light. Green airglow is visible below the red. Of course that's our Earth below its air, with the terminator between day and night visible near the horizon. As clouds speckle the planet, illumination from a bright lightning bolt is seen toward the lower right. Between work assignments, astronauts from all over the Earth have been enjoying vistas like this from the space station since the year 2000.
Credit: NASA/JSC/ESRS
Photograph
Since November 2000, people have been living continuously on the International Space Station. To celebrate humanity's 15th anniversary off planet Earth, consider this snapshot from space of our galaxy and our home world posing together beyond the orbital outpost. The Milky Way stretches below the curve of Earth's limb in the scene that also records a faint red, extended airglow. The galaxy's central bulge appears with starfields cut by dark rifts of obscuring interstellar dust. The picture was taken by Astronaut Scott Kelly on August 9, 2015, the 135th day of his one-year mission in space.
Credit: NASA/Scott Kelly
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Support
- Joy Ng (KBRwyle)
Related pages
Ionosphere Graphics
May 31st, 2018
Read moreStretching from roughly 50 to 400 miles above the surface, this region, called the ionosphere, is an electrified layer of the upper atmosphere, generated by extreme ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. Understanding the ionosphere’s extreme variability is tricky because it requires detangling interactions between the different factors at play — interactions of which we don’t have a clear picture. That’s where airglow comes in. Airglow occurs when atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere, excited by sunlight, emit light in order to shed their excess energy. The phenomenon is similar to auroras, but where auroras are driven by high-energy particles originating from the solar wind, airglow is sparked by day-to-day solar radiation. Airglow carries information on the upper atmosphere’s temperature, density, and composition, but it also helps us trace how particles move through the region itself. Vast, high-altitude winds sweep through the ionosphere, pushing its contents around the globe — and airglow’s subtle dance follows their lead, highlighting global patterns. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith Sunlight breaks atmospheric molecules apart, knocking off electrons and leaving behind a sea of charged electrons and ions. This population of electrically charged particles is the ionosphere, and it exists in the same space as the neutral upper atmosphere.Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith The concentration of charged particles in the ionosphere waxes and wanes with the Sun. The ionosphere is dense during the day. When the Sun sets, ionization ceases, and charged particles recombine gradually through the night, so density drops. The ionosphere is roughly divided into three altitude regions based on what wavelength of solar radiation they absorb: the D, E and F regions, with D being the lowermost region and F, the uppermost.Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith ICON and GOLD team up to explore Earth’s interface to space — a little-understood area that’s close to home but historically hard to observe. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith Earth's atmospheric layers further shield the planet and airborne and spaceborne assets from harmful solar particles and radiation. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith Earth's atmospheric layers further shield the planet and airborne and spaceborne assets from harmful solar particles and radiation. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith This model is an indication of the complexity of the ionosphere-thermosphere-mesosphere (ITM) system of planet Earth and the range of physical processes operating. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith Stretching from roughly 50 to 400 miles above Earth’s surface, the ionosphere is an electrified layer of the upper atmosphere, generated by extreme ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. It’s neither fully Earth nor space, and instead, reacts to both terrestrial weather below and solar energy streaming in from above, forming a complex space weather system of its own. The particles of the ionosphere carry electrical charge that can disrupt communications signals, cause satellites in low-Earth orbit to become electrically charged, and, in extreme cases, cause power outages on the ground. Positioned on the edge of space and intermingled with the neutral atmosphere, the ionosphere’s response to conditions on Earth and in space is difficult to pin down. Related pages
The Secrets behind Earth’s Multi-colored Glow
Oct. 22nd, 2018
Read moreMusic: "Nature Daydream" by Laurent Dury [SACEM], "Grape Picking" by Laurent Dury [SACEM] from Killer TracksComplete transcript available.Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel. What does our planet look like from space? Most are familiar with the beloved images of the blue marble or pale blue dot — Earth from 18,000 and 3.7 billion miles away, respectively. But closer to home, within the nearest region of space, you might encounter an unfamiliar sight. If you peer down on Earth from just 300 miles above the surface, near the orbit of the International Space Station, you can see vibrant swaths of red and green or purple and yellow light emanating from the upper atmosphere. This is airglow. Airglow occurs when atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere, excited by sunlight, emit light in order to shed their excess energy. Or, it can happen when atoms and molecules that have been ionized by sunlight collide with and capture a free electron. In both cases, they eject a particle of light — called a photon — in order to relax again. The phenomenon is similar to auroras, but where auroras are driven by high-energy particles originating from the solar wind, airglow is energized by day-to-day solar radiation. For More InformationSee [NASA's ICON Mission](https://www.nasa.gov/icon) Related pages