Ultraviolet emissions from Earth's aurora were observed at wavelengths between 1675 and 2075 ¿ by a sounding rocket payload launched at Churchill, Canada, on March 28, 1980. The emissions from the Lyman-Birge-Hopfield (LBH) and Vegard-Kaplan (VK) bands of N2 were observed and analyzed to determine the relative populations of the v=0--6 levels of the a1 &pgr;g state and the v'=4, 6, 7, and 8 levels of the A3 &Sgr;g+ state, respectively. The relative population of higher vibrational levels of the A3 &Sgr;g+ state are consistant with direct excitation and cascade. The relative populations of the vibrational levels of the a1&pgr;g state peak at v'=2. Such a distribution has not been observed previously in the aurora. ¿American Geophysical Union 1987