Photographer captures unique red glow over Denmark

On October 12, the eyes of photographer Ruslan Merzlyakov, who went to the Ti national Park (Denmark) to enjoy the spectacle of the milky Way, discovered something equally interesting. Instead of the usual (though stunningly beautiful) starry canvas, he saw a grandiose red glow all over the sky.

This glow of air masses is caused by chemical reactions in the upper atmospheric layers. The processes that generate them begin in the daytime, when the atmosphere is still permeated with ultraviolet radiation. And on a particularly dark night, we can sometimes notice something like an afterglow, colored green by O2 atoms at altitudes of 90-100 km. This time, due to the activity of hydroxyl molecules at altitudes of 86-87 kilometers, the glow turned red.

Some wonder if there is a connection between this phenomenon and the red auroras observed on the same day in Finland. Apparently not, they occur due to the excitation of oxygen atoms by the solar wind in the powerful layer of the atmosphere at altitudes of 150-500 kilometers.