That night sky photo with the green airglow blew my mind

I was scrolling through astrophotography posts last night and saw someone's shot from a dark site in Arizona. They had this faint green glow above the horizon, not northern lights or anything. I looked it up and found out it's called airglow, happens when atoms in the upper atmosphere get excited by sunlight during the day and release it at night. Had no idea it was a thing that shows up in long exposure photos. Has anyone else caught that in their pictures by accident?

2 comments

2 Comments

bettyk5310d ago

Went out to shoot the Milky Way once and spent an hour thinking my lens was broken because of this weird green haze in every frame. Turned out it was just the atmosphere doing its thing while I was blaming my gear like an idiot.

valsullivan10d ago

HAHA yep that sounds about right! I once spent a whole night shooting stars and kept seeing this weird orange blob in every single shot. Tore my hair out for hours thinking my sensor was fried or something. Nope. Just the moon rising behind a mountain I didn't even notice was there. It's ALWAYS something dumb like that when you think you're being clever with astrophotography. At least you figured it out before you threw your lens into a lake like I almost did with my tripod.