This phenomenon is similar to Earth’s aurora borealis events, lasting from sunset until midnight, and NASA has created a new animation using data obtained from an instrument on the MAVEN spacecraft to demonstrate what it might look like to future astronauts in orbit.

The team analyzed two Martian years’ worth of images taken by the Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph (IUVS) on the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission spacecraft to find the reported wind and UV emission behavior.

“The MAVEN spacecraft orbiting Mars has obtained a new type of imaging data which reveals the effects of global‐scale winds and waves in the upper atmosphere,” the study’s Plain Language Summary details.

The recent findings also demonstrate the importance of cooperative international efforts in exploring deep space, namely because MAVEN wasn’t the first spacecraft to demonstrate the existence of the ‘nightglow’ phenomenon.