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Summary
| Description |
English: A remarkable array of colors is visible in the night sky over Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab, in this image. We tend to assume that the night sky should be inky black and punctuated by stars, although it is rarely visible in cities and other highly-populated areas because of light pollution from artificial, man-made light. Interestingly, however, the night sky is not actually pitch black in the absence of light pollution. It instead reveals a beautiful array of subtle colors that arise from various phenomena. Most of the color in this image is due to red and green airglow, which is the term used to describe the slight brightening of the night sky caused by chemical reactions taking place in Earth’s atmosphere.
Español: En esta imagen se aprecia una increíble gama de colores en el cielo nocturno sobre el Observatorio Cerro Tololo (CTIO), un Programa de NOIRLab de NSF. Muchos creen que el cielo nocturno debería ser oscuro como la tinta y estar repleto de estrellas, pero debido a la contaminación lumínica causada por la luz artificial, rara vez podemos verlo así en las ciudades y otras zonas muy pobladas. Sin embargo, el cielo nocturno sin contaminación lumínica no es en realidad totalmente oscuro. Por el contrario, posee una hermosa gama de colores tenues causados por diversos fenómenos. La mayor parte del color de esta imagen se debe al airglow o luminiscencia nocturna roja y verde, que es el término utilizado para describir el ligero brillo del cielo nocturno causado por las reacciones químicas que ocurren en la atmósfera de la Tierra. |
| Date | |
| Source | https://noirlab.edu/public/images/iotw2226a/ |
| Author | CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/B. Tafreshi |
Licensing
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This media was created by the National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab).
Their website states: "Unless specifically noted, the images, videos, and music distributed on the public NOIRLab website, along with the texts of press releases, announcements, images of the week and captions; are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, and may on a non-exclusive basis be reproduced without fee provided the credit is clear and visible." To the uploader: You must provide a link (URL) to the original file and the authorship information if available. |
  This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
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File history
Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time.
| Date/Time | Thumbnail | Dimensions | User | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| current | 18:23, 22 June 2023 | | 7,000 × 6,629 (13.11 MB) | C messier | full size |
| 19:57, 29 March 2023 |  | 1,280 × 1,212 (414 KB) | Yiseth Romero | Uploaded a work by CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/B. Tafreshi from https://noirlab.edu/public/images/iotw2226a/ with UploadWizard |
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