14 DAY TRIAL // The NASA Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) satellite has recently produced this amazing new image of Antarctica, which showcases a beautiful array of night-shining (noctilucent) clouds that have begun developing earlier than usual this year.
These wispy blue-white clouds are usually very rare, since they form around so-called meteor smoke. This type of “smoke” forms close to the edge of space, where water molecules freeze around debris left behind by meteoroids entering Earth's atmosphere.
Noctilucent clouds usually form at altitudes around 80 and 85 kilometers (50 to 53 miles). They glow due to sunlight reflecting from their surface after the Sun sets. Until a few years ago, these atmospheric formations have only been observed from the ground, but they look equally spectacular from space.
It used to be that night-shining clouds only developed at very high latitudes, but in recent years they have been spotted at latitudes as low as Utah's or New York City's. Many researchers speculate that increased methane emissions in the atmosphere may be responsible for this shift, Space reports.