THE JOLLY BUCCANEERS

NASA’s AIM spacecraft took this picture of the entire Arctic surrounded by an electric-blue glow on July 24th

NOCTILUCENT CLOUDS FROM SPACE: This week, sky watchers near the Arctic Circle have reported nightly displays of bright noctilucent clouds.  The silvery ripples of NLCs look amazing from the ground, but they look even better from space. 

Regular readers of Spaceweather.com have been waiting for this image since June. Normally, AIM  transmits pictures of NLCs every day, but the regular flow of data was interrupted months ago. The reason has to do with the spacecraft’s orbit. Since AIM was launched in 2007, its orbit has been precessing–that is, slowly rotating with respect to the planet below. Eventually, accumulated changes in AIM’s orbital elements required a new way of pointing the spacecraft’s instruments. Mission controllers have been working on that problem all summer long–and it has finally been solved.

TO BE CONTINUED ON
www.Spaceweather.com

This entry was posted on July 29, 2017 at 1:17 am and is filed under 2017, astronomy, Galaxy with tags july 2017 sky watchers near the Arctic Circle have reported nightly displays of bright noctilucent clouds, noctilucent clouds, Space Weather. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.