In most photos from space, the atmosphere gradually fades away from pretty bright blue to essentially black, as you move away from the Earth surface, such as can be seen in this photo of the Earth from the ISS (also showing some noctilucent clouds):
NASA photo of Earth atmosphere. Source: NASA
Or by night (again with noctilucent clouds):
Earth atmosphere by night. Source: NASA
Yet in photos with an exposure long enough for stars and airglow to be clearly visible, the opposite appears to be the case:
NASA photo of Earth atmosphere and milky way. Source: NASA
In the third photo, the Earth is rather dark. Moving away from the Earth, the sky closest to the Earth is colourful, but faint enough for stars to be visible through it. Then the atmosphere appears to get brighter as you move further up, until it becomes abruptly black after a sharp edge. Higher up still we can see a faint but clearly visible band of red airglow. It's not aurora — aurora is higher up than airglow, and not so constant.
Another example, but with different colours (that could be a side-effect of exposure or editing):
ESA starry night. Source: ESA via Wikimedia Commons