NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day featured a photograph on August 27, 2026 of a visible aurora over Skógafoss waterfall in Iceland, taken in a single five‑second exposure in April 2025. The image shows the night sky illuminated with green, red and blue bands that appear to rain over the waterfall.

Auroras form when charged particles from the solar wind are captured by Earth’s magnetosphere and guided toward the poles, where they collide with atmospheric gases at different altitudes. Green emissions result from oxygen at lower altitudes, while red and blue colors arise from oxygen and nitrogen at higher levels.

The photograph was taken by Victor Lima, whose work is credited on the image, and was published as part of NASA’s daily feature that now redirects from apod.nasa.gov to science.nasa.gov/apod. The scene requires high solar activity, clear dark skies and a location at high latitude, conditions that make auroral displays more common in the Northern Hemisphere.

The picture underscores the ongoing observation of auroral activity in Iceland and illustrates how such natural light shows can be captured with modest equipment.