STEVE over Copper Harbor
5.05.2021

What creates STEVEs? Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancements (STEVEs) have likely been seen since antiquity, but only in the past five years has it been realized that their colors and shapes make them different from auroras. Seen as single bright streaks of pink and purple, the origin of STEVEs remain an active topic of research.

A Glowing STEVE and the Milky Way
17.11.2020

What's creating these long glowing streaks in the sky? No one is sure. Known as Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancements (STEVEs), these luminous light-purple sky ribbons may resemble regular auroras, but recent research reveals significant differences.

Swiss Alps, Martian Sky
18.02.2021

Taken on February 6, this snowy mountain and skyscape was captured near Melchsee-Frutt, central Switzerland, planet Earth. The reddish daylight and blue tinted glow around the afternoon Sun are colors of the Martian sky, though. Of course both worlds have the same Sun.

Rainbow Airglow over the Azores
18.04.2021

Why would the sky glow like a giant repeating rainbow? Airglow. Now air glows all of the time, but it is usually hard to see. A disturbance however -- like an approaching storm -- may cause noticeable rippling in the Earth's atmosphere.

APOD: 2024 October 28 Б STEVE: A Glowing River over France
28.10.2024

Sometimes a river of hot gas flows over your head. In this case the river created a Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement (STEVE) that glowed bright red, white, and pink. Details of how STEVEs...

Stars and the Solstice Sun
21.06.2007

If you could turn off the atmosphere's ability to scatter overwhelming sunlight, today's daytime sky might look something like this ... with the Sun surrounded by the stars of the constellations Taurus and Gemini. Of course, today is the Solstice.

Glory and Fog Bow
3.08.2024

On a road trip up Mount Uludaд in Bursa province, Turkey these motorcyclists found themselves above low clouds and fog in late June. With the bright Sun directly behind them, the view down the side of the great mountain revealed a beautiful, atmospheric glory and fog bow.

An Airplane Glory
22.12.2016

Looking out the window of an airplane, you might be lucky enough to see "the glory" in the direction directly opposite the Sun. Before airplanes, the phenomenon, known to some as the heiligenschein or the Specter of the Brocken, was sometimes seen from mountaintops.

Milky Way with Airglow Australis
3.02.2017

Captured last April after sunset on a Chilean winter's night an exceptionally intense airglow flooded this scene. The panoramic skyscape is also filled with stars, clusters, and nebulae along the southern Milky Way including the Large and Small Magellanic clouds.

AZURE Vapor Tracers over Norway
8.04.2019

What's happening in the sky? The atmosphere over northern Norway appeared quite strange for about 30 minutes last Friday when colorful clouds, dots, and plumes suddenly appeared. The colors were actually created by the NASA-funded Auroral Zone Upwelling Rocket Experiment (AZURE) which dispersed gas tracers to probe winds in Earth's upper atmosphere.