Noctilucent clouds 2006

Noctilucent clouds page 3 of 2006

My first "good" night at the new vantage point on a hill top (in my otherwise pretty flat neighboroughood). Although city lights were the thing that night, the struggle was in trying to photograph abnormal veil structure high in the sky (vy36211-vy36321). Dark blue sky is always a challenge and even more so with film EBX, which has excess blue sensitivity.

The best display in 2006 is shown after city lights. What was most rewarding in this August display was the clear, red zone on the top of the NLC layer. Sun was about to descend into a clear horizon as seen there up.

The very last picture is of auroras with a very small patch of NLC in the center just above the horizon. This kind of simultaneous existence is not observed very frequently - partly due to lack of dark sky during NLC-season. What makes such a sky interesting is that NLCs appear at height of 82-83 km and also some forms of aurora may be present at the same height.