Air glow

Airglow (also called nightglow) is a faint emission of light by a planetary atmosphere. In the case of Earth's atmosphere this optical phenomenon causes the night sky to never be completely dark, even after the effects of starlight and diffused sunlight from the far side are removed.

The airglow phenomenon was first identified in 1868 by Swedish physicist Anders Ångström. Since then, it has been studied in the laboratory, and various chemical reactions have been observed to emit electromagnetic energy as part of the process. Scientists have identified some of those processes that would be present in Earth's atmosphere, and astronomers have verified that such emissions are present.

Airglow is caused by various processes in the upper atmosphere, such as the recombination of atoms which were photoionized by the sun during the day, luminescence caused by cosmic rays striking the upper atmosphere, and chemiluminescence caused mainly by oxygen and nitrogen reacting with hydroxyl ions at heights of a few hundred kilometres. It is not noticeable during the daytime because of the scattered light from the sun.

Even at the best ground-based observatories, airglow limits the sensitivity of telescopes at visible wavelengths. Partly for this reason, space-based telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope can observe much fainter objects than current ground-based telescopes at visible wavelengths.

The airglow at night may be bright enough to be noticed by an observer and is generally bluish in colour. Although airglow emission is fairly uniform across the atmosphere, to an observer on the ground it appears brightest at about 10 degrees above the horizon, because the lower one looks, the greater the depth of atmosphere one is looking through. Very low down, however, atmospheric extinction reduces the apparent brightness of the airglow.

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