The abreviation RMR refers to the atmospheric scattering mechanisms used for the signal detection which are Rayleigh, Mie and Raman scattering. On the video, we can see 2 lasers from the RMR-Lidar. The other lights are aurora and some silvery light pilars.

The RMR-Lidar is used to measure winds for understanding the dynamics in the middle atmosphere on small (<100km) to global scales. It is a joint effort of several european partners, including 2 ARISE’s partners: IAP-KBORN (Germany) and the CNRS-LATMOS (France).

Through ARISE’s project, the RMR-Lidar’s will be combined with radars observations covering the lower troposphere (<10–15 km), mesosphere (50 to 90 km) and ionosphere (>100 km) to provide day and night measurements.

On the above video, the airglow at night may be bright enough to be noticed by an observer and is generally bluish in colour. In addition, it is easy to distinguish the clouds and the airglow: there is a real contrast between the both which allow everyone to be marveled by the luminescent spectacle.

Basically, the airglow consists of a radiation created by chemical reactions implying vibrational decays, such as recombination of atoms, which were photoionized by the sun during the day. Most of these radiations take place in the visible and in the short wave infrared regions (>80 km).

The luminescence is caused by cosmic rays strikling the upper atmosphere and the chemiluniscence is caused mainly by oxygen and nitrogen reacting with hydroxyl ions. The hydroxyl excited molecules produce one of the most observed airglow emissions.