noctilucent clouds

[Micke187]

Was out yesterday night and saw these shiny clouds. I would guess these are in fact nuctilucent clouds ? Unfortunatly i only had my mobilephone camera to take this photo so a little sorry about the quality on it.
This is the first time i ever seen these kind of clouds before so.


IMG_20190715_004438 by Mikael Wahlberg, on Flickr

[Gfamily]

Hi, yes. That's a great view of noctilucent clouds. The braiding is typical.

[John Baars]

Nice pic. Yes, those are noctilucent clouds. Very pleasant you have seen them, they are not very regular.
I saw them too in June and in the Netherlands that was. See the four pics in this thread.
Noctilucent Clouds, Netherlands night of 12 on 13 June 2019

[Micke187]

Yeah i recon they are quite a rare event on the sky.
I was out around 02.00 in the night when i saw them. I have only seen these clouds on picture and only seems to be very far away to like on your images John. These ones i took was almost on top of me when i saw them.

[j.gardavsky]

Hello Micke,

yes, this is a very nice example of the noctilucent clouds.
We have had lots of them in June, and they have restricted my observing sessions.
So, I have been greeting them with some swear words.

Clear skies,

JG

[Gfamily]

Their history is interesting - unreported until the year after the Krakatoa eruption of 1883 - then occasional appearances through the early 20th Century.
They now seem to appear regularly for a few weeks either side of the Summer solstice; and it's suggested they may be a consequence of rocket launches depositing H₂O exhaust in the mesosphere (between about 50 and 100km up).

[hal2000]

That's a nice image. We have been seeing "nocti's" regularly here in Ireland this last couple of months, after a run of some years with very few visible.

Some of the guys over here are pretty obsessed, and are out every night looking for them, although I personally must confess to having a lot of sympathy with JG's opinion.

One subject of discussion at the moment is whether the appearance of noctilucent clouds is connected to the solar cycle. My mate was telling a few of us that he has been observing the Sun recently and it is as quiet as he has ever seen it, with no sunspots and hardly any flares visible. The last big outburst of noctilucent clouds was around 10-12 years ago. He is away off doing some research on this.

[John Baars]

That's a nice image. We have been seeing "nocti's" regularly here in Ireland this last couple of months, after a run of some years with very few visible.

Some of the guys over here are pretty obsessed, and are out every night looking for them, although I personally must confess to having a lot of sympathy with JG's opinion.

One subject of discussion at the moment is whether the appearance of noctilucent clouds is connected to the solar cycle. My mate was telling a few of us that he has been observing the Sun recently and it is as quiet as he has ever seen it, with no sunspots and hardly any flares visible. The last big outburst of noctilucent clouds was around 10-12 years ago. He is away off doing some research on this.

I have heard of that connection too. One explanation seems to be that small particles and air / water molecules have the opportunity to rise higher in the mesosphere as a result of lower pressure from solar wind. Sounds like a plausible explanation, but let's wait for further research.

[Micke187]

maybe im super lucky to see these clouds again. This image is from tonight. And i think its starts to intensify even more. Will go out little later too see how it looks.

IMG_20190718_000124 by Mikael Wahlberg, on Flickr

[Micke187]

IMG_20190718_003407 by Mikael Wahlberg, on Flickr