June 7, 2025 Airglow to the Northwest

There was only a half an hour between moonset and twilight, but that was enough to get some dark skies and stars. The sky was clear but the atmosphere appeared hazy, like a layer of high clouds was blanketing the sky. I’ve come to realize that this hazy appearance usually means airglow rather than water vapor, so I set out with my camera to look around.

Sure enough, the sky appeared green as seen in my viewfinder, and I could see some faint rippling that most pronounced to the northwest. There are a couple of larger towns / cities in the line of sight and I could see the skyglow from the artificial light. There was also some additional glowing visible to the unaided eye, and this was the airglow.

I set up a timelapse and let it fire away hoping to catch any movement in the structure. I started out at a 20 second exposure with an interval timer set to 22 seconds, but this was a little too close, and so am making a note that in the future can go to a 1 minute spacing (1’.22” on the interval setting).

The timelapse ran for about 20-30 minutes from moonset to the onset of morning twilight. The air is bright green and the airglow was fairly strong, the the rippling is fairly weak. There are some clouds that drift through going west.northwest to east/southeast and the airglow appears to be flowing in the opposite direction, from south to northwest.

This brings up some questions for me.

What is the association between airglow and upper atmospheric water vapor?

How often does this haze appear and I mistaken it for water vapor?

How do airglow ripples form? Is there a capillary wave effect where smaller waves build into bigger waves?

Is there an electric or magnetic field enhancement that occurs during thunderstorms that drives or enhances the intensity of the rippling and glow?

What does the ripple wave pattern look like in 3-D?

Until next time…