File:Aurora-SpaceShuttle-EO.jpg

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Description

The Aurora Australis as seen from the Space Shuttle Discovery on STS-39. The payload bay and tail of Discovery can be seen on the left hand side of the picture. Auroras are caused when high-energy electrons pour down from the Earth’s magnetosphere and collide with atoms. Red aurora occurs from 200 km to as high as 500 km altitude and is caused by the emission of 6300 Angstrom wavelength light from oxygen atoms. Green aurora occurs from about 100 km to 250 km altitude and is caused by the emission of 5577 Angstrom wavelength light from oxygen atoms. The light is emitted when the atoms return to their original unexcited state.

Date

May 1991

Source

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=4800

Author

NASA (Crew of STS-39)
(Original uploader was Seth Ilys at en.wikipedia)

Permission
( Reusing this file)

This file is in the public domain because it was solely created by NASA. NASA copyright policy states that "NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted". (See Template:PD-USGov, NASA copyright policy page or JPL Image Use Policy.)

Warnings:

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The NASA website hosts a large number of images from the Soviet/ Russian space agency, and other non-American space agencies. These are not necessarily in the public domain.
Materials based on Hubble Space Telescope data may be copyrighted if they are not explicitly produced by the STScI. See also {{ PD-Hubble}} and {{ Cc-Hubble}}.
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Images featured on the Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) web site may be copyrighted.

This image or video was catalogued by one of the centers of the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under Photo ID: STS039-342-28.
This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information.

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