NASA Wants Your Help to Study These Rare, High-Altitude Clouds That Appear to Glow at Sunrise and Sunset Noctilucent clouds usually form close to the poles, but in recent decades, they’re being spotted closer to the Equator Noctilucent clouds over the Baltic Sea, as seen from Germany in 2019. Typically seen in polar regions, the clouds are increasingly appearing at mid- and low latitudes. Matthias Süßen via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 4.0 While astronomy and clouds don’t usually mix, a rare type of atmospheric phenomenon, called noctilucent or night-shining clouds, offers an exception, as reported by Space.com’s Anthony Wood. Noctilucent clouds are wispy, silvery-blue clouds found at much higher altitudes than usual. While most clouds form in the troposphere between Earth’s surface and about 11 miles above the ground, these appear in the mesosphere, up to 50 miles high. They become visible right after sunset or right before sunrise, when the sun illuminates them from beyond the horizon. The rare clouds likely come into being as ice crystallizes on meteor dust, when the mesosphere is rich with water and very cold, per EarthSky. Paradoxically, noctilucent clouds usually form in the summer. That’s because during the hottest months of the year, surface air warms up and rises, expanding and cooling as it does so. Alongside other processes, this cools the mesosphere to temperatures as low as minus 210 degrees Fahrenheit, according to EarthSky. This happens around Earth’s poles, so people are thus most likely to see noctilucent clouds in polar regions during the summer—for the Northern Hemisphere, the clouds tend to appear between late May and mid-August. What are noctilucent clouds and how can you see them? Watch on More recently, however, the rare phenomenon has been spotted closer and closer to the Equator. As such, NASA published a statement earlier this month asking citizen scientists to submit their observations and photographs of noctilucent clouds—even pictures taken in the past—to a crowdsourced research project called Space Cloud Watch. “Combined with satellite data and model simulations, your data can help us figure out why these noctilucent clouds are more frequently appearing at mid-low latitudes,” the agency explains. According to Royal Museums Greenwich, some scholars suggest climate change is responsible for that shift, as well as rocket launches. Rocket exhaust trails consist of small ice particles and water vapor, which can contribute to noctilucent clouds once they reach the mesosphere. Last summer, Europe saw especially spectacular noctilucent clouds, despite the fact that strong solar activity—such as what we’re experiencing now at the solar maximum—would normally have dissipated them, as reported by Spaceweather.com. This might be partially explained by the underwater volcano near Tonga that erupted in 2022 and threw a plume of water vapor into the atmosphere. “That was two years ago, but it takes about two years for the vapor to circulate up to the mesosphere, where NLCs [noctilucent clouds] form. Water is a key ingredient for NLCs, so Tonga’s moisture could be turbocharging the clouds,” Spaceweather.com reported in June 2024, adding that the 124 rocket launches so far that year likely also played a role. If you’re hoping to spot the night-shining clouds yourself this summer, the good news is that they’re visible to the naked eye. The bad news is that the only ways to predict their natural appearance are by checking for ideal upper atmospheric conditions and keeping an eye on north-facing webcams in regions east of your location, as reported by Stuart Atkinson for BBC Sky at Night Magazine last year. If noctilucent clouds are forming in those eastern skies, where the sun sets earlier, chances are that they might be soon visible in your area. And if you do happen to catch a glimpse, don’t forget to snap a photo for science. “I find these clouds fascinating and can’t wait to see the amazing pictures,” Space Cloud Watch project lead Chihoko Cullens, a research scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, says in NASA’s statement. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Sun Launches Its Strongest Solar Flare of the Year So Far, Causing Radio Blackouts Around the World The new sunspot responsible for this powerful blast is rotating into view, which could bring more solar activity—and potential aurora-causing coronal mass ejections—to Earth in the coming days The sun launched a powerful solar flare on May 14, 2025, captured here by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. NASA / SDO The sun has had quite a busy week hurling solar flares at our planet, causing blackouts across the globe. “After weeks of calm, solar activity is suddenly high again,” reports Spaceweather.com. This is not totally unexpected, as scientists announced in the fall that the sun has reached the peak of its natural, 11-year cycle of activity, a high level known as the solar maximum. During this phase, the sun has more sunspots—dark, cool regions with tangled-up magnetic fields that can erupt material out into space. The recent flares came from a pair of sunspots, including a new one that emerged earlier this week. Called AR4087, the spot is not completely aligned with Earth, but it’s currently turning toward our planet. “If the explosions continue for a few more days, however, Earth will find itself squarely in the strike zone,” with the potential for aurora-causing coronal mass ejections (CMEs) to arrive, writes Spaceweather.com. Solar flares are bursts on the sun’s surface that send electromagnetic radiation, including X-rays and extreme ultraviolet radiation (EUV), hurtling through space—and sometimes, they’re pointed at Earth. These forms of energy can ionize, or charge, low layers of the planet’s ionosphere on the sun-facing side. That can affect high frequency radio waves used for long-distance communication, because they bounce off the ionosphere’s upper layers to get around the globe. When the lower layers are ionized, however, these waves lose energy or become completely absorbed, causing radio blackouts. A solar flare’s intensity is classified as either A, B, C, M or X, with X being the most powerful and each letter representing an increase in strength by a factor of ten. Radio blackout intensities are ranked on a scale from R1 to R5, with R1 corresponding to an M1 flare and R5 corresponding to X20, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). On Tuesday, a sunspot named AR4086 shot out an X1.2 solar flare. The very next day, the new sunspot AR4087 followed up with an M5.3 flare before a significantly stronger X2.7 flare—then topped it all off with another M7.7 flare, as reported by Live Science’s Jess Thomson. The AR4087 explosion caused “strong” R3 radio blackouts in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, per Space.com’s Daisy Dobrijevic.Specifically, the X2.7 flare—the strongest so far this year—took place while the sun was over the Middle East and interrupted high frequency radio signals in the area for around ten minutes, explains Shawn Dahl, a space weather forecaster at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, to NBC News’ Denise Chow. “Other than the likelihood of [high-frequency] communication degradation due to some shortwave fade issues, we are unaware of any other likely or possible impacts,” Dahl says in a written statement to NBC News. However, as sunspot AR4087 rotates to face Earth head-on, we might be in for more solar activity. The powerful X2.7 flare also came with a CME, a burst of plasma and magnetic fields that can supercharge auroras. But rather than being pointed at Earth, that CME was launched at Mars, and it could cause auroras on the red planet this Sunday, per Live Science. “This is getting intense, especially as this active region turns closer into view,” Vincent Ledvina, an aurora chaser and photographer in Alaska, wrote in a social media post on Wednesday. “What does this AR have planned over the next days… we’ll have to wait and see.” Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.