This visible light image of the aurora is from the University of Iowa's Visible Imaging Investigations (VII) Visible Imaging System (VIS) on board the NASA Polar spacecraft. Note carefully the continent lines to see what part of Earth you're looking at. The very bright glow is the daylit side of the planet: you want to look for auroral arcs: a large ring of light around the North or South pole.

VII and VIS were designed and built by the Particles and Imaging research group from The University of Iowa. The Principal Investigator is Dr. Louis A. Frank and the Project Scientist and Manager is Dr. John B. Sigwarth.

VIS is one of 11 instruments aboard the Polar spacecraft, which is one of two satellites in the Global Geospace Science (GGS) Program managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. GGS represents a major US contribution to the world-wide International Solar Terrestrial Physics Program (ISTP) Program.