After an epic night of Milky Way capture over Canyonlands NP, Needles District, I set my camera on auto and crawled into my sleeping bag. As I slept, my trusty camera took this timelapse from 2am-4am. I’m told the green tint is a known phenomenon called sky glow or airglow, not unlike the aurora borealis. Look carefully and you might notice the green waves in the atmosphere. Apparently, in this case, daytime UV radiation puts energy into ozone which is pushed into a higher orbit. At the end of the night, electrons of ionized ozone atoms fall back to the earth. When this happens a photon is released into the sky, in this case with a green color. Also, a solar storm can make it more intense, though I’m not sure if that’s what happened here. I feared a problem with my lens but was relieved to know it is instead a natural phenomenon.

Audio credits: Calm Space © Audio Earth/Jamendo

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