Thursday, June 28, 2018

Space clouds

Space clouds as seen at the northern sky at the northern coast Netherlands. Just above my antenna. Wish I had better photograph equipment as making photos in these conditions is difficult without the proper equipment. ES was remarkable yesterday evening and when I made this photo at 22 UTC there were still plenty of signals. However I've still not seen any USA/Canada signals.

Space clouds or noctilucent clouds are actually only visible this time of the year. I was just reading MW1CFN John's weblog about it. Last year I wrote something about it. You might interested to read it again...

Update: Seems my photo is a cirrus cloud. From photos seen spaceclouds are brighter

7 comments:

Hans said...

Blijft een interessante materie Bas. Eigenlijk kijken wij te weinig omhoog, er is daar meer te zien dat wij denken. En ES was gisterenavond weer aanwezig op 2m en 6m, helaas niet zo sterk. Ik zag dat jij ook op 6m nog laat actief was.

Photon said...

Sadly, these are cirrus in strong twilight. Mostly, space clouds are lower on the horizon, about 15-40 degrees, though sometimes higher. They slowly drift E to W, which is usually opposite to weather cloud.

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hallo Hans, bij mij was de ES wel heel erg sterk. Sommige signalen waren gewoon niet te decoderen zo sterk. Alleen weer geen USA/Canada. Vanmorgen wel Japan te zien in 2 korte periodes. 73, Bas

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hello John, could it be these clouds are as rare as visible aurora? I've not seen them yet. I'll keep an eye on the sky late evening/early in the morning. I should be possible to see it from my radioshack which is upstairs and has free sight to the north. 73, Bas

Photon said...

Hi Bas,

NLC are not rare at all. Although they vary in frequency of occurrence between late May and early August (northern hemi), across the season, they might occur once every two nights or so. But only in summer!

I expect the reason you haven't seen them is that most media coverage and online material say that they are visible after sunset. That forgets to say that they are much more commonly seen from local midnight onwards, for about 2 hours on a typical midsummer night.

John, EI7GL said...

Bas, I managed to photograph some last night (7th July 2018) from Cork on the south coast of Ireland. It was about one hour after sunset and they looked just like a white cloud near the horizon. I needed a 5 second exposure on the camera to see the real detail... https://ei7gl.blogspot.com/2018/07/noctilucent-clouds-visible-from-cork.html

PE4BAS, Bas said...

I already seen it on your blog. Great photo. Till now I'm not able to see it yet...73, Bas