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A Spectacular, Autumnal Equinox, Post-Sunset Display
- Sep 23, 2009
About ninety minutes before the moment of autumnal equinox on Tuesday, September 22, and about 34 minutes after sunset we were treated to a spectacular display in the western sky. So far unverified by anyone with the credentials to label it as such, my suspicion is that what was visible from about 7:42 PM and lasting about 10 minutes was a noctilucent cloud formation. In the 5 years that this particular web camera has been in operation, I've not seen this before. Nor can I recall ever seeing something quite like this with my own eyes.
Noctilucent Clouds? Web Cam Image
As an amateur, mostly self-educated atmospheric scientist, I am wholly unqualified to judge. But, based upon what I have read?NASA and Wikipedia have some interesting and informative articles on the subject of noctilucent clouds, it appears to me that is what we saw.
I have made the original web cam image series available at http://image.bechter.com/wx2/5/index.html as well as a time-lapse mpeg video of the sequence (with apologies for the low-bandwidth speed) at http://image.bechter.com/wx2/5/noctilucent.mpg.