Planet Earth Aurora | International Space Station
The aurora australis swirls over a cloudy Pacific Ocean in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 270 miles above and southeast of New Zealand.
A bright green aurora australis streams above Earth's horizon blanketing the atmospheric glow in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 269 miles above a cloudy southern Indian Ocean midway between South Africa and Antarctica.
The aurora australis arcs back and forth above a partly cloudy Indian Ocean in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 270 miles above in between Australia and Antarctica. At center top, is the Rassvet module, at lower right, is the Soyuz MS-27 crew ship docked to the Prichal module.
An aurora streams across Earth's horizon in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 266 miles above the Bass Strait off the coast of southeast Australia. At left, a set of the orbital outpost's main solar arrays extend across the frame. At bottom, a portion of the station's U.S. segment is illuminated including the SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft docked to the Harmony module's forward port in this photograph taken from the cupola at approximately 6:56 p.m. local time.
The aurora australis arcs above a partly cloudy Indian Ocean in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 269 miles above in between Australia and Antarctica.
On Earth, auroras are mainly created by particles originally emitted by the Sun in the form of solar wind. When this stream of electrically charged particles gets close to our planet, it interacts with the magnetic field, which acts as a gigantic shield. While it protects Earth’s environment from solar wind particles, it can also trap a small fraction of them. Particles trapped within the magnetosphere—the region of space surrounding Earth in which charged particles are affected by its magnetic field—can be energized and then follow the magnetic field lines down to the magnetic poles. There, they interact with oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the upper layers of the atmosphere, creating the flickering, colorful lights visible in the polar regions here on Earth.
Earth auroras have different names depending on the pole where they occur. Aurora Borealis, or the northern lights, is the name given to auroras around the north pole and Aurora Australis, or the southern lights, is the name given for auroras around the south pole.
Follow Expedition 73:
Expedition 73 Crew
Station Commander: JAXA Flight Engineer Takuya Onishi
Roscosmos (Russia) Flight Engineers: Kirill Peskov, Sergey Ryzhikov, Alexey Zubritskiy
NASA Flight Engineers: Anne McClain, Nichole Ayers, Jonny Kim
An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada.
For more information about STEM on Station:
Image Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center
Capture Dates: July 22, 2025
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