Tsunami lit up the heavens

Japan’s recent monster earthquake did more than jolt the island nation and send a tsunami racing across the Pacific Ocean. Hundreds of kilometers overhead, that tsunami also lit up the atmosphere in celestial glowing ripples.

In the first picture of its kind, scientists photographed these “airglow” ripples as they washed over Hawaii hours after the quake. The report will appear in an upcoming Geophysical Research Letters.   link