Youtube account Night Lights Films - Adrien Mauduit, who seems to know what they're talking about, claims to have filmed 2 hours worth of 'very rare type II polar stratospheric clouds' over Tromsø, Norway.
Pretty sure there's been a number of reports of similar sightings on SOTT in recent years. In the last week or so there's been a couple of posts of recent PSC sighting as well.
According to wiki:
Below is the video and the accompanying, informative, blurb:
Pretty sure there's been a number of reports of similar sightings on SOTT in recent years. In the last week or so there's been a couple of posts of recent PSC sighting as well.
According to wiki:
- Type II clouds, which are very rarely observed in the Arctic, have cirriform and lenticular sub-types [9] and consist of water ice only.[4]
Only Type II clouds are necessarily nacreous[1] whereas Type I clouds can be iridescent under certain conditions, just as any other cloud. The World Meteorological Organization no longer uses the alpha-numeric nomenclature seen in this article, and distinguishes only between super-cooled stratiform acid-water PSCs and cirriform-lenticular water ice nacreous PSCs.[
Below is the video and the accompanying, informative, blurb:
Polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) are clouds in the winter polar stratosphere at altitudes of 15,000–25,000 m (49,000–82,000 ft). They are best observed during civil twilight, when the Sun is between 1 and 6 degrees below the horizon, as well as in winter and in more northerly latitudes.[1] One main type of PSC is made up mostly of supercooled droplets of water and nitric acid and is implicated in the formation of ozone holes.[2] The other main type consists only of ice crystals which are not harmful. This type of PSC is also referred to as nacreous (/ˈneɪkriəs/, from nacre, or mother of pearl, due to its iridescence).
Yesterday (17th of January 2022), the northern regions of Scandinavia were treated to a very rare high-altitude spectacle. For about 2 hours, rare polar stratospheric clouds (PSC) type II appeared out of nowhere, displaying a staggering iridescence contrasting with the dimmer twilight of the short polar days.
PSCs are also called mother-of-pearl clouds or nacreous clouds because their iridescence (diffraction of sunlight in tiny ice particles) is some of the strongest in clouds on Earth. Their strong colors are very visible with naked eyes, making the experience surreal, almost straight out of a fairy tale. They are also some of the highest clouds on Earth, forming around 15-30km in altitude in very precise conditions, limiting their occurrence. It needs to be extremely cold up there (below 78°C), which can only be satisfied in the winter months above polar regions where the stratosphere is at its coldest. There, tiny ice particles (along with other chemicals present in type I) nucleate and form over mountain ranges because of vertical shears/strong winds to form lenticular structures (type II).
I filmed those in a rush yesterday between snow showers, as a friend gave me the heads up. I used a long focal length to really try and emphasize their iridescence. In one of the sequences, you can also see Jupiter hang above the clouds (top left corner!), as well as an airplane flying by! All was shot with the Sony a7rII at a focal length of 200-600mm (Sony). All post production was made in FCPX. I hope you like the movie as much as I liked shooting and processing it and I thank everyone of you for your support. All content is of course copyrighted Night Lights Films (except sountrack licensed through Artlist, see credits for title and artist), and no footage can be used in any way without our prior consent /permission. Please contact us at nightlightsfilms@gmail.com for media and purchase inquiry. Please share and comment if you liked the video and follow me for more videos like this one! More at nightlightsfilms.com. Thanks for watching and don't forget to subscribe!!