Glow-in-the-Dark Clouds

Noctilucent clouds float high enough in the atmosphere to capture a little bit of stray sunlight even after the Sun has set below them.

This image originally appeared in the NASA Earth Observatory story Glow-in-the-Dark Clouds.

NASA Earth Observatory map by Jesee Allen, using preliminary Polar Mesospheric Cloud data from the University of Colorado Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. Caption by Pola Lem.

Published December 2, 2016
Data acquired November 29, 2016