Aurora surrounding the night side of Mars have been photographed by the United Arab Emirates Hope probe, currently in orbit around the Red Planet. 

The Emirates Mars Mission, the first interplanetary exploration undertaken by an Arab nation, arrived in orbit around the Red Planet in February this year.  

The probe is the first to photograph the 'discrete aurora' caused by solar radiation hitting the nightside of the atmosphere and only visible in ultraviolet light. 

They have revolutionary implications for our understanding of interactions between solar radiation, Mars' magnetic fields and the planetary atmosphere, the team said.

Mars has three types of aurorae – proton, diffuse and discrete – but none are visible to the naked eye, only in various forms of ultraviolet light, requiring a special camera.

Until these new images by the Hope probe, only the proton aurora, which occurs during the day, had been captured by ultraviolet cameras on NASA spacecraft. 

The Hope probe will continue to gather a full overview of the Martian atmosphere every nine days for the next two years, providing planetary scientists with the first, overview of the entire martian atmosphere over a longer period of time.

The images, taken by the probe's EMUS (Emirates Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer), show a ghostly glow surround the planet known as the 'discrete aurora'. 

'These global snapshots of the discrete aurora are the first time such detailed and clear observations have been made globally, as well as across previously unobservable wavelengths,' said Hessa Al Matroushi, mission science lead.