This stunning picture (see the high resolution picture) of polar mesospheric clouds (PMCs) was photographed by the space shuttle Atlantis crew when visiting the the Internantional Space Station (ISS) this June. This image was taken looking north while the Shuttle and ISS were docking and flying over the border between western China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan. The red-to-dark region at the bottom of the image is the dense part of the Earth’s atmosphere. Because this image was taken with a long lens (180mm), the entire profile of the Earth’s limb (the edge of the atmosphere) was not captured.
In the summertime in the far northern or southern latitudes, high in the Earth’s atmosphere at the edge of space, thin, silvery clouds sometimes become visible just after sunset. These high clouds, occurring at altitudes of about 80 kilometers (50 miles), are called polar mesospheric clouds (PMCs). They are also called noctilucent (“night-shining”) clouds. In recent years, polar mesospheric clouds seem to be occurring more frequently and at lower latitudes than they have in the past, and studies are underway to determine whether their occurrence is related to global climate change.
Source: Earth Observatory
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→Polar Mesospheric Clouds
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