Published 18 August 2021 at 16.48
Domestic. The Institute of Space Physics (IRF) has been able to observe night-light clouds from a height of three miles using balloon-mounted cameras sent up from Esrange on Monday night.
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– The research experiment was a huge success! For more than ten hours, the cameras were running in the stratosphere, says Peter Dalin, researcher at IRF responsible for the experiment, in a statement.
Night-shining clouds consist of very small ice crystals that have formed around dust particles and are the highest located the clouds in the earth's atmosphere at an altitude of 80 kilometers. The ordinary clouds we see in the sky are formed at an altitude of 9-12 kilometers.
The clouds are at such a high altitude that the sun's rays reach them even though the sun has set. When the sun has just passed the horizon and is between 6–16 degrees below the horizon, they are best seen. The small ice crystals reflect the sun's light, which means that we experience that the clouds shine in the night sky. The summer phenomenon is mainly seen in the northern hemisphere between mid-May and mid-August.
On board the French stratosphere balloon were also scientific instruments from France, Canada and Germany that studied various processes in the atmosphere.
All instruments reached the ground in the afternoon of August 17.