Earth glows like a crescent as a giant aurora writhes over the North Pole in this ultraviolet image from the new Smile spacecraft. Quick Facts What it is: An aurora on the sunlit side of Earth Where it is: Over the North Pole, seen from about 75,000 miles away When shared: September 30 The first images from a new Earth observation satellite have just given us a glimpse of the impossible: giant auroras billowing over the North Pole in broad daylight. Earth’s auroras are one of our planet’s signature wonders: a spectacle worth advertising in interstellar travel guides, along with our perfect total solar eclipses, brilliant shooting stars, and majestic pufferfish. They are the beautiful result of thunderstorms in the atmosphere, which appear when charged solar particles skate along Earth’s magnetic field lines and collide with light-emitting molecules near the poles. (Auroras exist on other planets, but they usually don’t have visible bright colors like ours.) To human eyes, auroras appear only at night and rarely deviate from the poles. That’s what makes these first observations from the joint European-Chinese Smile mission, which officially began its scientific operations this week, so special. Latest videos from Live Science Captured in ultraviolet light, the stunning images show a huge, snake-shaped ring of charged particles coiling around the North Pole in July 2026. In the foreground, the Earth appears ghostly and featureless, glowing like a crescent. The aurora twists around the sunlit side of our planet, covering about a third of it, while the dark, nighttime side of Earth fades into the background sky. In the distance, bright stars fall like raindrops as Smile subtly shifts in his orbit. Smile tested its soft X-ray imager in light from the distant supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (center), located 11,000 light years from Earth. The view alone is worth a smile, but the new images also promise exciting science to come. Taken just two weeks after scientists first turned on Smile’s ultraviolet aurora imager, the observations show that the satellite’s instruments are working as they should and that the joint mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences can officially begin. You might like Launching on May 19, Smile will spend the next three years observing Earth from a highly elliptical orbit that takes it about 75,000 miles (121,000 kilometers) above the North Pole, about a third of the way to the Moon. From there, Smile can observe the North Pole for a record 45 hours straight, offering an unprecedented view of solar activity there. In addition to the ultraviolet aurora imager, Smile carries three more scientific instruments to detect X-rays, magnetic fields and light ions on Earth. Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. This week, scientists also tested the spacecraft’s soft X-ray imager by pointing it toward the distant supernova remnant Cassiopeia A. located about 11,000 light-years from Earth (image above). Although the camera works well, the detector still picks up too much light when pointed at Earth, so it will require a little more calibration by scientists on the ground. TOPICS space photo of the week
