NASA/Chris Williams
NASA astronaut Chris Williams photographed the Milky Way rising above Earth’s glowing atmosphere on April 13, 2026, while aboard a SpaceX Dragon attached to the International Space Station.
This faint atmospheric glow is known as airglow. It happens when atoms and molecules high in Earth’s atmosphere absorb energy from sunlight and later release it as light.
It can also occur when charged particles created by sunlight reconnect with free electrons. In both cases, tiny packets of light called photons are emitted as the particles return to a calmer state.
Airglow is similar to the aurora, but there is a key difference: auroras are powered by energetic particles from the solar wind, whereas the Sun’s normal daily radiation drives airglow.
source NASA
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