Bob Koure
1 min readDec 27, 2023

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Great explanation!

As someone who sometimes photographs the night sky I can say that the color of airglow changes as you go from about 10° above the horizon where it's blue-green to directly above where it shades from greenish to reddish. This is only visible in long exposures (10 seconds and longer)[see *]. It's a bit of a PITA as it's hard to set the entire sky to a neutral black without affecting star colors.

I can't see airglow with my naked eyes even fully dark adapted - and most people don't live in places where it's visible at all as it's overwhelmed by skyglow, which is reflected light from artificial illumination. I can very much see skyglow when it's there. And (trivia) skyglow has been changing as we shift from mercury vapor or sodium vapor outdoor illumination to LED. Both those previous kinds have known and very notchy spectra, making it possible to filter out. LED makes it near impossible.

I have to wonder if Mars airglow is bright enough to be naked-eye visible.

*Our visual system color corrects to see something not-exactly-black as black, same way things don't all look green under a forest canopy - even though a camera sees it that way.

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Bob Koure
Bob Koure

Written by Bob Koure

Retired software architect, statistical analyst, hotel mgr, bike racer, distance swimmer. Photographer. Amateur historian. Avid reader. Home cook. Never-FBer

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