Northern Lights

Russian astronaut Serguéi Kud-Sverchkóv recorded and shared through social media a video showing the glow of planet Earth, Northern Lights and dawn as seen from the International Space Station.
You can weep with so much beauty.

We fly over the northeast of the Pacific Ocean. Quickly we move to the North Atlantic and from total darkness we fly into the part of the orbit that is not yet illuminated by the sun but receives the light reflected by the moon.

From space, even at night, you can clearly see the ocean, clouds and night cities.

The Milky Way, the galaxy in which we live, appears to float in the horizon. Can you see the orange halo over the Earth? It is the Earth’s own glow. It is practically invisible from the surface of the Earth, but clearly visible from the ISS.

The glow arises from processes in the upper atmosphere: ion recombination, luminescence and chemiluminescence.

Many people recognize the characteristic bright green light: it is the glow of atomic oxygen at altitudes between 80 and 150 km (at a wavelength of 557.7 nm).

If you look more closely, over the green halo there is another dark red one: this one is the glow of molecular nitrogen, as well as that of atomic oxygen at altitudes between 150 and 400 km (at a wavelength of 630 and 636.4 nm), almost at the flying altitude of the ISS.

The Space Station is flying over the North Pole just before dawn. The incoming solar light scattered by nitrogen atoms creates a bright blue oval on the horizon. And finally, the sun rises!

Translated by Mertxe de Renobales Scheifler