NASA captured striking photos of electric blue clouds

NASA captured striking photos of electric blue clouds 50 miles above the Earth's poles, offering a unique look at the turbulence of the upper atmosphere.

These nocturnal clouds, or mesospheric polar clouds (PMCs), form in summer, when ice crystals meet on minute particles of meteorites in the mesosphere. The result is long blue and white clouds visible just after sunset.

With the help of a giant balloon equipped with seven imaging systems, NASA has collected 6 million high-resolution photos of this natural phenomenon. The Turbo PMC balloon left Sweden in early July and landed in Canada five days later, but the photos have just been released.

Although the clouds are beautiful, NASA scientists are more interested in the forces that shape them. Ascending air masses, such as when the air is pushed by the mountains, transfer energy from the lower atmosphere to the mesosphere. They are known as gravity waves and understand their movement can help scientists better model the turbulence of oceans, lakes and other planetary atmospheres. This could also help weather forecasts.

"From what we've seen so far, we expect to have a truly spectacular data set of this mission," said Dave Fritts, principal investigator of the PMC Turbo mission, in a statement. . "This is the first time we have been able to visualize the flow of energy from larger gravity waves to smaller flow instabilities and turbulence in the upper atmosphere."

"At these altitudes, you can literally see the gravity waves breaking – like the waves of the ocean on the beach – and the cascades to the turbulence," he added.

In addition to the images, the PMC Turbo mission used a laser or lidar radar to measure cloud elevations and temperature changes in gravity waves above and below, helping to determine wave structure.