Night clouds seeded by meteors

Some clouds begin with dust from meteors.

These electric-blue noctilucent clouds form when tiny ice crystals grow around particles left high in the atmosphere.

Noctilucent clouds above Edmonton, Canada, on 2 July 2011 — NASA / Dave Hughes (ground photograph); NASA / Joy Ng (AIM animation). Original imagery resized.

They form roughly 80 kilometres above Earth, far higher than ordinary weather clouds.

NASA detected meteoric material inside their ice crystals.

NASA AIM observations of Antarctic noctilucent clouds, 17–28 November 2016 — NASA / Dave Hughes (ground photograph); NASA / Joy Ng (AIM animation). Original imagery resized.

They can still catch sunlight after the ground below has gone dark.

Their apparent night-time glow is sunlight scattered by ice, high above the shadowed landscape.

Why high noctilucent clouds can remain sunlit above a darkened landscape — Pandi explanatory diagram based on the cited research. Schematic, not to scale.

Some clouds begin with dust from meteors.

These electric-blue noctilucent clouds form when tiny ice crystals grow around particles left high in the atmosphere.
They form roughly 80 kilometres above Earth, far higher than ordinary weather clouds.

NASA detected meteoric material inside their ice crystals.
They can still catch sunlight after the ground below has gone dark.

Their apparent night-time glow is sunlight scattered by ice, high above the shadowed landscape.

Night clouds seeded by meteors

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