At high parallel of latitude in the Northern Hemisphere in late spring and summertime , it ’s potential to catch a curious nighttime - time phenomenon : wispy , pale low-spirited clouds shine in the light of a Sun that has already set . These formations are known asnoctilucent clouds , and late reports have them popping up further and further south .
The NASA Earth Observatory recentlylooked into these reportsand , in the cognitive process , capture a gorgeous serial publication of planet images of the cloud reflecting light into place . The photos were taken on June 12 using observations from NASA ’s Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere ( AIM ) spacecraft . The satellite measures the albedo of clouds – fundamentally , the amount of light they reflect .
The cloud form when water system vapour crystallize high in the atm . This chance more often in the summer months because the upper standard atmosphere grows cooler as the lowly layer of the atmospheric state gets affectionate . During this process , frosting crystals can grow around particles or meteor dust .
These cloud are usually located between 80 and 85 kilometer ( 50 and 53 miles ) in elevation and between 50 ° and 65 ° North . This is why it was so surprising to see them as low as the Southern California desert and Europe , a phenomenon that ’s take place more often than in old years . The most potential account , concord to researchers , is the increased presence of water vapor in the ambiance – a consequence of the clime crisis .
There ’s also another possible factor : solar body process . Our Sun experiences an 11 - twelvemonth cycle , run short from a upper limit to a lower limit of activity . We are presently eitherat or nearly at the minimum . During these time , there is a little less ultraviolet light hail from our asterisk to break up molecules in the upper atmosphere , head to more corpuscle than average .
Noctilucent cloud can also fall out due to artificial event . A sensational cloud was formed over Orlando in 2014 after a SpaceX Falcon garden rocket launch .
