March 16, 2020
Two of the Earth’s most colorful supernatural atmospheric phenomena, aurora and aerial glow, hit just before breakfast in this photo, taken by an astronaut on the International Space Station (ISS). Wavy green, red-topped wipes from Northern Lights appear to cross the muted red-yellow band of aerial glow as the ISS continues just south of the Alaskan Peninsula. The rising sun, behind the limb of the earth at the time of this photo, adds a deep blue to the horizon. Light from cities in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, joins starlight to dot the early morning skyscape.
Although they appear at similar heights, aurora and aerial glow are produced by different physical processes. Night glass (as night glass) is a kind of chemiluminescence – the emission of light from chemical interactions between oxygen, nitrogen and other molecules in the upper atmosphere. Air glass occurs around the earth, all over. ‘Night glow’, however, is much easier to find on a dark Earth than ‘day glass’, because air glow is only one billionth as bright as the sun.
Auroras, on the other hand, stem from interactions between solar energy and the Earth’s magnetic field. The magnetic field truncates the energy in the upper atmosphere, where it interacts with the same atoms as air glow (especially oxygen and nitrogen). This is why both phenomena can produce similar colors. The dynamic nature of Earth’s magnetic field displaces solar energy in irregular ways, making each aurora’s event visually unique.
Recently, the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit joined NASAJohnson Space Center used machine learning to identify all the photos astronauts have taken of auroras over the past few decades. Search the Gateway to Astronaut Photograph of Earth database to “aurora” to see more than 270,000 photos of these magnetic wonders.
Astronaut Photo ISS062-E-98264 was purchased on March 16, 2020, using a Nikon D5 digital camera with a 50mm lens and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center. The image was created by a member of the Expedition 62 crew. The image has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory as part of the ISS National Lab to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to release these images on the Internet. . Additional images created by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA / JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Text by Alex Stoken, Jacobs, JETS contract with NASA-JSC.
