Vast areas of Mars’ nightside atmosphere glow and pulsate with ultraviolet light, according to images from NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft.

Mars’ nightside atmosphere glows and pulsates in this data animation from MAVEN spacecraft observations.

Green-to-white false color shows the enhanced brightenings of Mars’ ultraviolet “nightglow” measured by MAVEN’s Imaging UltraViolet Spectrograph at about 40 miles (70 km) altitude.

New images from NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft – released August 6, 2020 – reveal vast areas of Mars’ night sky pulsing in ultraviolet light.

Unfortunately, the composition of Mars’ atmosphere means that these bright spots emit no light at visible wavelengths that would allow them to be seen by future Mars astronauts.

This is an image of the ultraviolet “nightglow” in the Martian atmosphere.

The image shows an intense brightening in Mars’ nightside atmosphere.

University of Colorado’s Nick Schneider is instrument lead for the MAVEN Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph (IUVS) instrument that made these observations, and lead author of a paper on this research published August 6, 2020, in the peer-reviewed Journal of Geophysical Research, Space Physics.

This is an image of the ultraviolet “nightglow” in the Martian atmosphere over the south pole.

The nightglow was measured at about 40 miles (70 km) altitude by the Imaging UltraViolet Spectrograph instrument on NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft.

The image shows an unexpectedly bright glowing spiral in Mars’ nightside atmosphere.

Bottom line: New MAVEN mission images show vast areas of Mars’ night sky glowing and pulsating with ultraviolet light