Airglow Ripples over Tibet
Image Credit: Jeff Dai
Why would the sky look like a giant target? Airglow. Following a giant thunderstorm over Bangladesh in late April, giant circular ripples of glowing air appeared over Tibet, China, aspictured above. The unusual pattern is created byatmospheric gravity waves, waves of alternating air pressure that can grow with height as the air thins, in this case about 90 kilometers up. Unlikeauroras powered by collisions with energetic charged particles and seen at high latitudes, airglow is due to chemiluminescence, the production of light in a chemical reaction. More typically seen near the horizon, airglow keeps the night sky from ever being completely dark.
#space #stellar #stars #nasa #iss #galaxy #galaxies #hubble #spitzer #telescope #planets #universe #milkway #nebula #cosmic #comet #ESA #ESO #saturn #mars #venus by splitmind19