Mars may be known as the Red Planet, but a European spacecraft has now detected a green glow around it. According to study published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy, the European Space Agency's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter has found oxygen that is causing a green glow in the planet's atmosphere. The discovery has created a huge buzz on social media, with netizens coming up with a number of memes and jokes about the green glow.
According to the New York Post, Mars has oxygen in its atmosphere which triggers the glow on interacting with sunlight. Oxygen atoms get "charged up" by sunlight. When they "relax", they glow a pale green hue.
This is the first time that such a glow has been observed on any planet other than Earth - where it appears in the form of auroras on the poles.
"One of the brightest emissions seen on Earth stems from night glow. More specifically, from oxygen atoms emitting a particular wavelength of light that has never been seen around another planet," said Jean-Claude Gerard of the Universite de Liege, Belgium, and lead author of the study published in Nature Astronomy.
"However, this emission has been predicted to exist at Mars for around 40 years - and, thanks to TGO, we've found it," he said in a statement shared by the European Space Agency (ESA), titled 'ExoMars spots unique green glow at the Red Planet.'
Mr Gerard added that the green glow of Mars is different from Earth's. "The observations at Mars agree with previous theoretical models but not with the actual glowing we've spotted around Earth, where the visible emission is far weaker," he added.
The Twitter account of ESA's Trace Gas Orbiter shared an artist's impression of the glow. Take a look at it below:
The detection of the green glow around Mars has led to a number of reactions on the microblogging platform.
Some quipped that it appeared as if Mars had added Earth to its 'close friends' list - a reference to the green ring that appears around Instagram stories shared only with close friends.
Some wondered if Mars wanted to social distance from humans.
"Nature is healing," wrote one Twitter user, referring to the parody posts that have flooded Twitter since coronavirus-induced lockdowns world-over began to lower pollution levels.
Detection of the green glow will help scientists understand more about the atmosphere of Mars.
"By looking at the altitudes of where this emission is, you can actually tell the thickness of the atmosphere and how it's varying," Dr. Manish Patel, co-author of the study, according to the New York Post. "So, if you were to keep observing this phenomenon, you could see the height of the atmosphere change, something it does for example when it heats up during dust storms. This is an issue we face when we try to land on Mars because we're never quite sure just how thick the atmosphere will be when we plough through it to get to the surface."
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