"Our New Year’s Light Show" | International Space Station

"Our New Year’s Light Show" | International Space Station

NASA astronaut and Expedition 72 Flight Engineer Don Pettit released this photo of aurora captured on January 1, 2025 during a severe geomagnetic storm due to continued effects from the coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that left the Sun on December 29th, 2024. The Sun's outer atmosphere, the corona, is structured by strong magnetic fields. Where these fields are closed, often above sunspot groups, the confined solar atmosphere can suddenly and violently release bubbles of gas and magnetic fields called CMEs. A large CME can contain a billion tons of matter that can be accelerated to several million miles per hour in a spectacular explosion. Solar material streams out through the interplanetary medium, impacting any planet or spacecraft in its path.

Auroras are produced when the Earth's magnetosphere is sufficiently disturbed by the solar wind that the trajectories of charged particles in solar wind and magnetospheric plasma, mainly in the form of electrons and protons, precipitate them into the upper atmosphere (thermosphere/exosphere) due to Earth's magnetic field, where their energy is lost. The resulting ionization and excitation of atmospheric constituents emits light of varying color and complexity. [Wikipedia]

Solid Colored Aurora

Green is common at the upper latitudes, while red is rare. On the other hand, aurora viewed from lower latitudes tend to be red.

Element Emission Colors

Oxygen: The big player in the aurora is oxygen. Oxygen is responsible for the vivid green (wavelength of 557.7 nm) and also for a deep brownish-red (wavelength of 630.0 nm). Pure green and greenish-yellow aurorae result from the excitation of oxygen.

Nitrogen: Nitrogen emits blue (multiple wavelengths) and red light.

Other Gases: Other gases in the atmosphere become excited and emit light, although the wavelengths may be outside of the range of human vision or else too faint to see. Hydrogen and helium, for example, emit blue and purple. Although our eyes cannot see all of these colors, photographic film and digital cameras often record a broader range of hues.

Aurora Colors According to Altitude

Above 150 miles: red, oxygen

Up to 150 miles: green, oxygen

Above 60 miles: purple or violet, nitrogen

Up to 60 miles: blue, nitrogen

NASA - About Aurora

https://www.nasa.gov/science-research/heliophysics/auroras/

https://pwg.gsfc.nasa.gov/polar/EPO/auroral_poster/aurora_all.pdf

The Colors of the Aurora (National Park Service)
https://www.nps.gov/articles/-articles-aps-v8-i1-c9.htm

Learn more about the International Space Station: https://www.nasa.gov/international-space-station/

Expedition 72 Updates:

https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/

Expedition 72 Crew
Station Commander: Suni Williams
Roscosmos (Russia) Flight Engineers: Alexey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner, Aleksandr Gorbunov
NASA Flight Engineers: Butch Wilmore, Don Pettit, Nick Hague

An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada.

Image Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC)/Don Pettit
Release Date: Jan. 2, 2025

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