Saint Elmo's fire on the ISS? What are these green glowing balls of plasma on a solar panel? Dangerous?

Question

This tweet says:

Almost the entire population of Egypt lives within a few miles of the Nile.

But my eye is on the green glowing balls on what looks like it might be a solar panel.

Question: What are all these little green glowing balls of (presumably) plasma on this (presumably) solar panel on the ISS? Saint Elmo's fire? Its space station equivalent? What exactly causes it? It looks like an electrical discharge but that's not something you'd normally want to be doing on solar panels, wouldn't there be a preferred pointy thing to discharge the ISS with?

See answers to How do spacecraft measure their own charge?

Reflections of internal LEDs. Not associated with the solar arrays. Remember the truck parked behind the shuttle? https://space.stackexchange.com/a/8363/6944 — Organic Marble, Aug 07 '19 at 02:09

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 07 '19 at 02:17

5

It's an internal reflection. I wish I knew of what exactly, but here's the same line of green LEDs in a different picture. Some gadget in the cupola.

I am not promising this is the source, but the Robotics Workstation (mounted in the cupola) has a lot of green LED illuminated buttons on it and you can see them reflecting all over the place here.

answered Aug 07 '19 at 02:17

Organic Marble

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yes indeed, that panel looks awfully suspicious. – uhoh Aug 07 '19 at 02:22
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The same one Earthy was standing on. – Organic Marble Aug 07 '19 at 02:22
What is Earthy controlling in the ISS cupola? feel free to add it back in – uhoh Aug 07 '19 at 02:24
The refractive index is a US government conspiracy... – Ingolifs Aug 07 '19 at 02:51
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An international cabal - the Canadians built the Workstation! – Organic Marble Aug 07 '19 at 02:56

Saint Elmo's fire on the ISS? What are these green glowing balls of plasma on a solar panel? Dangerous?

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