Data provided by the ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) mission was used to show what a green nightglow would look like to human astronauts on the Red Planet. When the skies are clear, the glow could be bright enough for humans to see by and for rovers to navigate in the dark nights.
This greenish atmospheric nightglow occurs when two oxygen atoms combine to form an oxygen molecule, approximately 50 km (31 mi) above the planetary surface. On Mars, they form on the planet’s dayside when sunlight gives energy to carbon dioxide molecules, making them split apart. When these oxygen atoms migrate to the night side and stop being excited by the Sun, they re-form and emit light at lower altitudes.
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This emission is due to the recombination of oxygen atoms created in the summer atmosphere and transported by winds to high winter latitudes, at altitudes of 40 to 60 km in the martian atmosphere,” said Lauriane Soret, researcher from the Laboratory of Atmospheric and Planetary Physics of the University of Liège, in Belgium.
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