Satellite Gets Pictures of Mysterious Shining
Clouds
Monday , July 09, 2007
By Dave Mosher
LS
ADVERTISEMENT
A new NASA satellite has recorded the first detailed images from
space of a mysterious type of cloud called "night-shining" or
"noctilucent."
The clouds are on the move, brightening and creeping out of polar
regions, and researchers don't know why.
"It is clear that these clouds are changing, a sign that a part of
our atmosphere is changing and we do not understand how, why or
what it means," said atmospheric scientists James Russell III of
Hampton University in Hampton, Va. "These observations suggest a
connection with global change in the lower atmosphere and could
represent an early warning that our Earth environment is being
changed."
Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Natural Science Center.
The "Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere" (AIM) satellite first
imaged the noctilucent clouds May 25. People on the ground began
seeing them June 6 over Northern Europe.
The clouds form 50 miles above the Earth's surface, in an upper
layer of the atmosphere called the mesosphere.
The puffs of water vapor and crystals appear during summer months
above the Northern Hemisphere's pole as well the Southern
Hemisphere's pole in summer.
AIM will record two complete cloud seasons over both regions,
effectively documenting an entire life cycle of the shiny clouds
for the first time.
Researchers hope to figure out why noctilucent clouds form and how
they might be related to global climate change.
[/url]
