“Night-shining” clouds are bringing a mystery that NASA has now made a mission to study- these hauntingly beautiful noctilucent clouds were previously restricted to the poles but are now being seen over Colorado. This photograph here was taken over the Juneau, Alaska, ice field in 1998.

‘Night-shining’ clouds, also known as ‘noctilucent’ clouds were discovered 120 years ago - the strangely luminescent clouds have been moving slowly toward the equator and also appear to be getting brighter and more numerous, too, said David Rusch, a University of Colorado atmospheric scientist.

NASA launched a $110 million AIM (Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere) mission to measure noctilucent clouds and the circumstances in which they form - which may be linked to climate change. The AIM satellite will measure air temperature and pressure, moisture content and cloud dimensions.

Noctilucent clouds appear only at night at an altitude of 50 miles up in the atmosphere; a position which lets them catch sunlight no longer visible from Earth’s surface. Normal clouds are less than 10 miles up in the atmosphere. James Russell, an atmospheric scientist at Hampton University in Virginia, the NASA mission’s principal investigator reported that:

“They’re very beautiful, they look very mysterious, but aside from all that, these clouds are changing in ways we don’t understand … Observed increases in water vapor in the atmosphere - a consequence of warming - may also make it easier for the clouds to form”

Scott Bailey, an engineering professor at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia said:

“Methane, another powerful greenhouse gas, may also be involved … Methane’s presence can increase the amount of water in the upper atmosphere, through a complicated chemical dance”

Researchers have many ideas about why noctilucent clouds are going through these changes and developments and most of them are related to global warming. NASA hopes to get answers with the AIM mission.