{"id":17256,"date":"2023-11-22T09:22:25","date_gmt":"2023-11-22T03:52:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=17256"},"modified":"2025-04-05T03:08:47","modified_gmt":"2025-04-04T21:38:47","slug":"airglow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/airglow\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Airglow?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>About Airglow<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Airglow is the\u00a0natural \u201cglowing\u201d of the Earth\u2019s atmosphere.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>It\u00a0happens all the time and\u00a0across the whole\u00a0globe.<\/li>\n<li>The phenomenon is\u00a0similar to auroras,\u00a0but where\u00a0auroras are driven by\u00a0high-energy particles originating from the solar wind,\u00a0airglow is energized by ordinary, day-to-day\u00a0solar radiation.<\/li>\n<li>Unlike the aurora, airglow does not exhibit structures such as arcs and is emitted from the entire sky at all latitudes at all times.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>There are\u00a0three types of airglow: dayglow, twilightglow, and nightglow.<\/li>\n<li>Each is the result of sunlight interacting with the molecules in the atmosphere,\u00a0but they have their own special way of forming.<\/li>\n<li>The most\u00a0common airglow colors are green, red, and blue. However, other colors also occur.<\/li>\n<li>Dayglow:<\/li>\n<li>o It forms\u00a0when sunlight strikes the daytime atmosphere.<\/li>\n<li>o Some of the\u00a0sunlight is absorbed by the\u00a0molecules in the atmosphere,\u00a0which gives them excess energy. They\u00a0become excited.\n<ul>\n<li>The\u00a0molecules then release this energy as light, either at the same or slightly lower frequency (colour) as the light they absorbed.\u00a0This light is much dimmer than daylight,\u00a0so we can\u2019t see it by eye.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Twilight glow:\n<ul>\n<li>It is essentially the\u00a0same as dayglow,\u00a0but only the upper atmosphere is sunlit.<\/li>\n<li>The\u00a0rest of the atmosphere\u00a0and the\u00a0observer on the ground\u00a0are in darkness.<\/li>\n<li>So, unlike day glow,\u00a0twilightglow is actually visible\u00a0to us on the ground with the naked eye.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Nightglow:\n<ul>\n<li>The\u00a0chemistry behind nightglow is different. There is\u00a0no sunlight\u00a0shining\u00a0on the nighttime atmosphere. Instead,\u00a0a process called \u201cchemiluminescence\u201d\u00a0is responsible for the glowing atmosphere.<\/li>\n<li>Sunlight deposits energy into\u00a0the atmosphere during the day, some of which is\u00a0transferred to oxygen molecules (e.g. O\u2082).<\/li>\n<li>This\u00a0extra energy causes the\u00a0oxygen molecules to rip apart into individual oxygen atoms. This happens particularly around 100km in altitude.<\/li>\n<li>However,\u00a0atomic oxygen\u00a0isn\u2019t able to get rid of this excess energy easily, so it acts as a \u201cstore\u201d of energy for several\u00a0hours.<\/li>\n<li>Eventually, the atomic oxygen\u00a0does manage to \u201crecombine\u201d, once again\u00a0forming molecular oxygen.\u00a0The\u00a0molecular oxygen then releases energy, again\u00a0in the form of light.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q1) What is an aurora?<\/h3>\n<p>The sun is ejecting charged particles from its corona, creating solar wind. When that wind slams into Earth&#8217;s ionosphere, the aurora is born. In the Northern Hemisphere, the phenomenon is called the northern lights (aurora borealis), while in the Southern Hemisphere, it&#8217;s called the southern lights (aurora australis). The hemispheric asymmetry of the aurora is due in part to the sun&#8217;s magnetic field interfering with Earth&#8217;s magnetic field.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ndtv.com\/science\/nasa-shares-stunning-image-of-earths-airglow-taken-from-international-space-station-4588239\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>NASA Shares Stunning Image Of Earth&#8217;s &#8216;Airglow&#8217; Taken From International Space Station<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Airglow is the natural \u201cglowing\u201d of the Earth\u2019s atmosphere. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":17257,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17256","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}