It’s dark o’clock and midsummer in Scotland…. there have been a significant amount of Noctilucent cloud displays recently but you’ll need to be up late to see them. This series of shots was taken about 0130-0200 hours.
Shots were taken at the yachting pond in North Berwick, with the Scottish Seabird Centre and Craigleith island in the background of four of them and one shot with the Bass Rock in the distance… it was a stunning night, lovely and warm and as you can see Scotland still has clear blue skies even in the middle of the night. Scotland… one of the sunniest places in the world, even at night!
Noctilucent clouds, or night shining clouds, are tenuous cloud-like phenomena in the upper atmosphere of Earth. They consist of ice crystals and are only visible during astronomical twilight, and only during local summer months. They are the highest clouds in Earth’s atmosphere, located in the mesosphere at altitudes of around 76 to 85 km (47 to 53 mi). They are too faint to be seen in daylight, and are visible only when illuminated by sunlight from below the horizon while the lower layers of the atmosphere are in Earth’s shadow.
