{"id":111793,"date":"2020-08-23T02:23:59","date_gmt":"2020-08-23T09:23:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/08\/astronomers-mystified"},"modified":"2020-08-23T06:14:33","modified_gmt":"2020-08-23T13:14:33","slug":"astronomers-mystified","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/08\/astronomers-mystified","title":{"rendered":"Astronomers Mystified by Eerie Phenomenon on Mars: Ultraviolet \u201cNightglow\u201d Spreads Across the Planet\u2019s Sky Every Night"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/astronomers-mystified.gif\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This is an image of the ultraviolet \u201cnightglow\u201d in the Martian atmosphere over the south pole. Green and white false colors represent the intensity of ultraviolet light, with white being the brightest. The nightglow was measured at about 70 kilometers (approximately 40 miles) altitude by the Imaging UltraViolet Spectrograph instrument on NASA\u2019s MAVEN spacecraft. A simulated view of the Mars globe is added digitally for context, and the faint white area in the center of the image is the polar ice cap. The image shows an unexpectedly bright glowing spiral in Mars\u2019 nightside atmosphere. The cause of the spiral pattern is unknown. Credit: NASA\/MAVEN\/Goddard Space Flight Center\/CU\/LASP<\/p>\n<p>Every night on Mars, when the sun sets and temperatures fall to minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit and below, an eerie phenomenon spreads across much of the planet\u2019s sky: a soft glow created by chemical reactions occurring tens of miles above the surface.<\/p>\n<p>An astronaut standing on Mars couldn\u2019t see this \u201cnightglow\u201d\u2014it shows up only as ultraviolet light. But it may one day help scientists to better predict the churn of Mars\u2019 surprisingly complex atmosphere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is an image of the ultraviolet \u201cnightglow\u201d in the Martian atmosphere over the south pole. Green and white false colors represent the intensity of ultraviolet light, with white being the brightest. The nightglow was measured at about 70 kilometers (approximately 40 miles) altitude by the Imaging UltraViolet Spectrograph instrument on NASA\u2019s MAVEN spacecraft. A [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":580,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/580"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111793"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111796,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111793\/revisions\/111796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}