Polar and equatorial views of Earth, the aurora, the equatorial airglow bands, and the geocorona. Two 30° x 120° nadir-centered images show Earth and its faint lights at vacuum-ultraviolet wavelengths. Features of Earth's disk (dayglow from the sunlit atmosphere, auroral oval, and equatorial airglow) appear primarily in the emissions of atomic oxygen at about 130.4 and 135.6 nm and of the LBH bands of molecular nitrogen, while beyond the limb the instrument responses are entirely due to solar Lyman radiation resonantly scattered by Earth's extended hydrogen atmosphere, the geocorona.

The image in the left panel shows an active auroral oval on 14 October 1981 at 2017 UT following the onset of a substorm at local midnight. Spacecraft altitude is 16,500 km at 67° N latitude. The image in the right panel provides a view of Earth's dark hemisphere at 0222 UT on 16 February 1982 while the sun is behind Earth. Spacecraft altitude and latitude are 19,700 km and 13° N, respectively. The northern auroral oval forms a halo of light above the limb of Earth, while the equatorial airglow bands in the premidnight sector straddle the magnetic equator. Isolated points of light in both images are VUV bright stars.