Green light in the satellite image What could be the possible reason for the green border visible in this satellite image ?

(Image source)
 A: This is known as airglow. This is the fluorescence of atoms in the atmosphere which have been excited in one way or another. Processes which induce this phenomenon include


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*photoionization by the sun during the day, which recombine at night,

*photoexcitation by the sun during the day, with fluorescent emission at night,

*luminiscence caused by cosmic rays,

*at appropriate latitudes, luminiscence caused by the solar wind (i.e. a low intensity aurora), and

*chemiluminescence caused by chemical reactions producing electronically excited molecules which then fluoresce.


The original Earth Observatory picture does not mention the phenomenon, but this very similar one does, as do this one and this one. Wikipedia also has some nice pictures.
A: The green color suggests that it is the fluorescence of oxygen. Being brightest near the North Pole suggests that it is being caused by the charge particles (electrons and positive ions but it's mainly the electrons that have enough energy to ionize the oxygen) bouncing back and forth between the poles along the Earth's magnetic field lines. In other words it is the Aurora Borealis seen from space.
This website says that the atmosphere's green oxygen fluorescence occurs at an altitude of 120-180 km.
I printed out the picture and with a string measured the radius of the Earth pictured to be 12", and the height of the green to be 3/16" above the Earth.  Scaling by the 6357 km polar radius of the Earth yields an altitude of 100 km for the green light,  somewhat in agreement (and probably within my crude measurement errors)  with the Aurora altitude from the website .
A: To me it's quite difficult to imagine that this greenglow would be caused by atomic reactions, like explained in "Airglow". There are various aspects which speaks against this. 


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*Wavelengths emitted from such a reactions, are variable. And this glow is clearly only green.

*The light emitted from such a reactions are spread to all direction, but this glow is similarly visible as in rainbow. 

*The green border seem to be lower in the middle of the picture. 

*There is various colours present, as shown by the picture below, and these colours seem to orientate by equator. This picture is from the "Airglow" video found in wikipedia. 
[
So, I claim that this phenomenon is part of the Green flash. At German wiki you can find this picture;
 
And it can be easily noticed how the sun light might start to "orbiting" the Earth in a certain hight. And how this all would produce exactly such a color fields in equator as is shown in the "Airglow" picture. 
ANSWER; The green light is sunlight which has bend in the atmosphere.
