naked eye

Description

At around 2:40am I looked out the window before I went to bed and noticed something glowing in the sky, I turned my lights off and looked out the window and see the clouds were glowing so I quickly grabbed my camera to take some shots. At first I thought it may of been the Moon behind the clouds but checked and the Moon was not in that part of the sky so what next came into my mind that it was either a UFO (reminded me of a scene from 'War of the Worlds' the version with Tom Cruise where the storm clouds throw down aliens.) but thought to myself no thats too far fetched or the Northern lights but there was no light movement. After some research I found out that they are Noctilucent clouds which are very rare clouds that are only witnessed during the summer months close to the North pole during twilight hours when the sun is just below the horizon. Noctilucent clouds are composed of tiny crystals of water ice up to 100 nm in diameter and exist at a height of about 76 to 85 km (47 to 53 mi), higher than any other clouds in Earth's atmosphere. Clouds in the Earth's lower atmosphere form when water collects on particles, but mesospheric clouds may form directly from water vapour in addition to forming on dust particles. Some scientists say these clouds are witnessed further from the poles due to global warming but NASA disagree on this statement. I took over 20 different photo's between 2:45am and 3am using a Sony NEX 5 with a SEL 18-200mm lens and the SEL 16mm pancake lens. I took the photo's with the camera in night shot mode which made the whole landscape brighter then what it actually was with the naked eye. The photographs are raw straight from the SD card with no editing or tampering.