CHASING NOCTILUCENT CLOUDS

Elusive ghostly night clouds over Renfrewshire, Scotland

By Johnny Graham

August 27^th, 2019

In the Scottish summer months the night sky is a dartingly quick visitor

In the Scottish summer months the night sky is a dartingly quick visitor and indeed near the summer equinox with a clear sky you will be forgiven for even pondering if the sun bothered to wander over the distant horizon for any length of time so quick will the light of dawn come. The wonderful tapestry of stars that paints our sky will only briefly come out to play, and the Northern Lights who dance merrily and brightly only a few short months before will now be dim against the near constant twilight.

But there is one seasonal visitor, they are a mystery and phenomenon and like the aforementioned Northern Lights they seem to favour nearer the Polar regions, Noctilucent clouds.

NLC over Glasgow Airport, taken from Linwood, Renfrewshire.

Noctilucient Clouds(NLC's) appear as bright ghostly wispy electric blue clouds that come in a variety of shapes. They are the highest of clouds and sit 50 miles up literally touching the area of our atmosphere that Space begins and high enough that they are still catching the suns light and illuminating the ice crystals that form the clouds. No one really knows what causes them or how new they are, they might of just went unnoticed or recorded until fairly recently. Some people thought volcanoes cause them, the first reliable recordings come from after the Krakatoa volcano eruptions of 1883, some think the ionized trails left by meteors in the upper atmosphere is the cause, more depressingly some think it might be us polluting the atmosphere or at the very least some global change and indeed if that is the case some observers ominously say NLC's are increasing over time.

NLC over Paisley, Robertson Braes Carpark.

I have had the good fortune to not only witness it many a time during my sky watching but to have remembered occasionally to use my camera as well. One of the joys of them is I do not have to venture too far afield so I have caught them in our Paisley and Renfrewshire night sky.