Aurora viewed from space.

1. fluff
   June 25th, 2007 at 6:01 am

   Impressive.

2. Sid Morrison
   June 25th, 2007 at 7:41 am

   That is pretty cool! I wonder how edited/enhanced it is, though. A lot of released NASA photos are *heavily* doctored, and have been for decades to make them more intriguing to non-scientists (who then tell their congressmen to keep the bucks flowing in NASA's direction).

   I'm not saying that the moon shots were shot in the Nevada desert or anything, but NASA employs a number of talented artists who are good at adding color were the wavelengths of light are not visible, removing noise, upping saturation levels, sharpening blurriness and general photoshopping so that the public-released images wind up truly dazzling. The heavy editing always makes me wonder how much you can trust. As an engineer myself, I'd like to see a little less reliance on special effects artists and more on the RAW images.

   Straight talk from Sid.

3. Justin
   June 25th, 2007 at 9:58 am

   It looks like something out of a Science fiction show.

4. Tempscire
   June 25th, 2007 at 11:50 am

   I've always wondered what an aurora would like from the other side of the atmosphere. Nifty.

5. chet
   June 25th, 2007 at 12:08 pm

   They tell you exactly how they made this picture:
   "The ring of light that the solar storm generated over Antarctica glows green in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum, shown in this image. The IMAGE observations of the aurora are overlaid onto NASA’s satellite-based Blue Marble image."

6. Sid Morrison
   June 25th, 2007 at 1:36 pm

   chet: That's my whole point. NASA heavily doctors the images they put out to the public to make them look extra pretty and appealing. They make some beautiful pieces of art, but the "science" disappears pretty fast when you start doing this. They've taken heat for this in the past, but pretty pictures excite more people about space = bigger budgets for them.

   They admit this image is a composite of at least 2 other images, one of which (a "Blue Marble - Next Generation picture") is itself heavily "enhanced" - read about that on their website. Like the resurrected Viking boat in another article, you have to wonder how much is real by the time they are finished.

   Straight talk from Sid.

7. John
   June 25th, 2007 at 10:14 pm

   I just recently posted about another cool image of the northern lights - - the link is here(the one titled auroraborealis):

   http://tivac.com/images/backgrounds/

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