Album: Photos:中国 – Běijīng, Xī’ān, Guìlín, Yángshuò, Shànghǎi, 11.-25. Juli 2009 (2572):Travel to China and back:Noctilucent Clouds
Back

Noctilucent clouds over Russia. Noctilucent clouds, are tenuous cloud-like phenomena that are the "ragged-edge" of a much brighter and pervasive polar cloud layer called polar mesospheric clouds in the upper atmosphere, visible in a deep twilight. They are made of crystals of water ice. The name means roughly night shining in Latin. They are most commonly observed in the summer months at latitudes between 50° and 70° north and south of the equator (taken from Wikipedia).

A slightly enhanced version of one of the pictures:

Observed at 55.45° N, 53.71° E aboard flight LH 722 MUC-PEK. Times below are given in UTC.
11.07.2009 21:21 11.07.2009 21:21 11.07.2009 21:21 11.07.2009 21:21 12.07.2009 21:22
12.07.2009 21:22 12.07.2009 21:22 12.07.2009 21:22 12.07.2009 21:23 12.07.2009 21:24
12.07.2009 21:24 12.07.2009 21:24 12.07.2009 21:24 12.07.2009 21:24 12.07.2009 21:25
12.07.2009 21:25 12.07.2009 21:25 12.07.2009 21:25 12.07.2009 21:25 12.07.2009 21:25
12.07.2009 21:25
Album created by album generator from Dave Madison's MarginalHacks on Fri Aug 29 13:28:35 2014
All photos Copyright © 1990-2014, Robert Wagner