The above image may look like a strange space planet or have been manipulated through the Ingram application, but it is a picture of the Earth surrounded by an orange glow known as the "airglow" according to the US Department of Aeronautics and Space Administration.
The space agency explains that this night glare is "scattered beams of light extending from 80 to 643 kilometers in our atmosphere." This phenomenon usually occurs when molecules - mostly nitrogen and oxygen molecules - are activated by ultraviolet rays from sunlight .
The atoms in the lower atmosphere collide with each other and lose energy in the collision, and the result is a nightly colored glow, the agency said on its Web site.
"Although this glow is orange, other glows were in rainbow colors," Space.com said.
NASA said the picture taken by an astronaut on board the International Space Station on October 7, while the station was at a height of four hundred miles over Australia.
Although the scene looks great at any time, but the best view of it is during the night, because it hid a billion times from sunlight, according to an article published by NASA in 2012 about this phenomenon.
"This light emission from chemical reactions is similar to the chemical reactions that illuminate the glow stick or paste that glows in the dark," the agency wrote at the time.
Natural phenomena allow scientists to understand how molecules move near the Earth's surface and space, including the links between space and Earth's weather, NASA said.