Latest Noctilucent cloud Stories

[WATCH VIDEO: Comet ISON Meteor Shower] redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online While Comet ISON’s eagerly anticipated encounter with the sun won’t even happen until November, it seems likely the fireball is already prepping a special encore performance for stargazers here on Earth. In January, the US space agency’s Swift spacecraft observed the comet ISON while it was still near the orbit of Jupiter. Even then, it had already become extremely active, with...

NASA A constant stream of space debris flows toward Earth from the rest of the solar system. Large meteors can sometimes survive the intense friction and heat upon entering Earth’s atmosphere, but by and large the meteors evaporate and reform into tiny particles that are left to whiz through the atmosphere. Such particles are so light and so ubiquitous that scientists refer to them as smoke. Tracking how this smoke swirls around Earth has implications for understanding weather and...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The last space shuttle flight took place on July 8, 2011, sending Atlantis into space for its thirty-third, and final mission. This flight marked the end of a 20-year space shuttle program. As Atlantis reached a height of about 70 miles over the east coast of the U.S., it released 350 tons of water vapor exhaust. The vapor plume spread and floated on air currents high in the Earth's atmosphere, crossing through the observation paths...

Watch the Video : [ Meteor Smoke Makes Strange Clouds ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Bits of "meteor smoke" have been detected in a noctilucent cloud (NLC), supporting an already existing theory. Noctilucent clouds were first noticed in 1885 about two years after the eruption of Krakatoa. Ash from the volcano caused great sunsets, making it a global past time for people to sit and look up at the sky at dust. A German named T.W. Backhouse, who is credited...

When noctilucent clouds (NLCs) first appeared in the 19th century, they were a high-latitude phenomenon. You had to travel toward the poles to see their electric-blue glow. Not anymore. Just this past weekend, these beautiful, "night-shining" clouds spilled over the Canadian border into the lower United States as far south as Denver, Colorado.In recent years, a NASA spacecraft called AIM (Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere) has spotted the clouds appearing ever lower in latitudes,...

High up in the sky near the poles some 50 miles above the ground, silvery blue clouds sometimes appear, shining brightly in the night. First noticed in 1885, these clouds are known as noctilucent, or "night shining," clouds. Their discovery spawned over a century of research into what conditions causes them to form and vary "“ questions that still tantalize scientists to this day. Since 2007, a NASA mission called Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) has shown that the cloud...

NASA's Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) satellite has captured five complete polar seasons of noctilucent (NLC) or "night-shining" clouds with an unprecedented horizontal resolution of 3 miles by 3 miles. Results show that the cloud season turns on and off like a "geophysical light bulb" and they reveal evidence that high altitude mesospheric "weather" may follow similar patterns as our ever-changing weather near the Earth's surface. These findings were...

GREENBELT, Md., Dec. 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) satellite has captured five complete polar seasons of noctilucent (NLC) or "night-shining" clouds with an unprecedented horizontal resolution of 3 miles by 3 miles. Results show that the cloud season turns on and off like a "geophysical light bulb," and they reveal evidence that high altitude mesospheric "weather" may follow similar patterns as our ever-changing weather near the Earth's...

The STPSat-1, built for the Department of Defense (DoD) Space Test Program (STP) and operated by the DoD STP for the first year then transitioned to NRL for the last 16 months, was decommissioned on October 7th after completing almost 2 ½ years of successful on-orbit operation. The satellite's two payloads, both designed and built by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), provided unique measurements of middle atmospheric hydroxyl, polar mesospheric clouds and the low latitude ionosphere.The...

A NASA rocket launched to study clouds spooked dozens of people along the U.S. East Coast, some worried about aliens landing, officials said.Exhaust particles from the rocket launched Saturday night at Wallops Flight Center in Virginia illuminated the sky with a cone-shape light that could be seen as far north as Massachusetts, NASA spokesman Keith Koehler said.CNN affiliate stations and NASA officials reported dozens of calls from people who saw the light, including some worried about...