The mystery of noctilucent clouds

According to the US Space Agency (NASA), noctilucent clouds that look like "geophysical lights" turn on every year in late spring and may appear in many evenings in the summer months. Let's discover the site with Discovery, showing the beautiful beauty of these strange clouds.

The names of noctilucent clouds can reveal their origin as well as their appearance. These are clouds that glow strangely at night, in a low position north or west of the horizon. They appear to be most powerful after the prolonged periods of low solar activity. For this reason, they are also called " clouds that shine at night".

The sun is slowly waking up after a long, quiet time, so in the coming weeks we can witness the breathtaking spectacle that some people predict could be the best show. in the past 100 years.

Noctilucent clouds are thought to be made up of ice crystals located high in the atmosphere, at an altitude of about 83km (in the middle), where 99.99% of the atmosphere is located below. They are located at the edge of the space and the mystery surrounding their formation is a million times more drought than the Sahara!

The process of forming any cloud requires steam and microscopic dust particles to allow moisture to condense around - a process called nuclear construction. Despite the drought at such elevations, convection can carry high evaporation to the middle layer. However, the origin of dust particles is still a mystery.

No matter how they are formed, we can be sure that, year after year, during the period of late May and early June, noctilucent clouds will often bring great performances. great

Robert Leslie was said to be the first to discover the cloudy phenomenon when he observed the strange scene in the sky of Southampton, England in July 1885. Before 1885, there were no reports or records of the occurrence of these mysterious clouds.

Many experts speculate that noctilucent clouds are evidence of climate change, because their first observations coincide with the time of the industrial revolution. Since then, human pollutants could have been pushed to the upper layer of the atmosphere, enabling the formation of noctilucent clouds.

Another guess is that noctilucent clouds are related to volcanic activity because they were first observed only two years after Krakatoa volcano erupted. However, while the effects of the eruption have ended, the noctilucent clouds have steadily appeared since then and they seem to be spreading.

It is also possible that particles in the air from which the noctilucent clouds formed from meteorites enter the atmosphere.

The origin of noctilucent clouds may still be a mystery to humans in a few years, but one thing is for sure, we can still enjoy them. If you are at a latitude of 40 degrees or more, you can see noctilucent clouds at this point. They are easy to observe without telescopes or binoculars. Just look north / west (in the direction of the setting sun) about 30-60 minutes after sunset, and if you see blue or white light tassels stretching across the sky, it's clouds Noctilucent - one of the most beautiful landscapes of nature.