Summer’s ghosts: NOCTILUCENT CLOUDS

Yes, you read that correctly: Sky at Night Magazine is encouraging you to look at clouds. But aren’t clouds the mortal enemies of sky-watchers? Aren’t they the Voldemort to our Harry Potter? Not these clouds, no. Although it has to be said some astronomers and sky-watchers don’t consider noctilucent clouds (NLCs) to be astronomical and dismiss them as being “just clouds” or worse, “the poor man’s aurora”, many amateur astronomers enjoy observing and photographing them just as much as others enjoy peering through their scopes at misty spiral galaxies and glittering star clusters.

However, unlike those much-loved deep-sky objects, NLCs are not visible all the time; there is an NLC season which runs between the end of May and the start of August every year. This is part of their appeal for many sky-watchers during those long, bright summer nights: a strong display of NLCs