Auroras from Space For centuries, people could only marvel at auroras from the ground (Norwegian physicists almost froze climbing mountains to study them!) There, the aurora looks like curtains of light. Because auroras form around 100 kilometers above Earth’s surface, astronauts could get a great shot of the aurora from the shuttle orbiting at 300 kilometers above Earth. Photographs from even farther out in space show us that these spectacular forms are found in a giant ring called an Auroral Oval. Actually, there’s a crown of light around each of Earth’s magnetic poles (north & south). Besides visible light, auroras also emit both ultraviolet and X-ray radiation. Scientists sometimes launch rockets into the upper atmosphere to study auroras. Here you can see the flight path of a sounding rocket as its first stage falls back to Earth and the second stage continues into the ionosphere.