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Post by martinastro on May 5, 2008 12:58:22 GMT
Before dawn on May 4/5th I decided to go outside in the hope of catching a few Eta-Aquarid meteors. As soon as I stepped out into the night I spotted a strange eerie glow between my neigbour's houses. I thought to myself, that looks like NLCs. So I walked to a good vantage point on an elevated position for a better view. The entire N to NE sky was glowing a bright electric blue colour!, - classic NLCs. This was a an extensive veil of type 3 (?) brightness and extending 80 degrees in azimuth and 10 degrees high. There may have been scattered IIa bands but it was difficult to be certain due to thin dark wisps of Tropospheric cloud. The display was visible from 03.45 - 04.15 BST until morning twilight washed it from the sky. That strong blue glow was unmistakable. I was shocked as this is very early in the season indeed, my first sightning during the 2007 season was on May 17th but this is the earliest I have seen them to date. I would be interested in any other sightings. I managed to get a few images before my battery died.
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Post by brianb on May 6, 2008 8:33:47 GMT
May 5/6: Looked carefully to the NE between 0300 & 0320 GMT, the sky was lightening but it looked just like ordinary twilight to me. Inspecting your photos carefully I see little evidence for NLC, I suspect just twilight plus a little very very thin cirrostratus giving the "banded" appearance. When I've seen NLCs before there has been a fair amount of detail down to the limit of naked eye resolution, with a tendency for the finer details to be bright rather than dark.
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Post by martinastro on May 6, 2008 16:16:38 GMT
Those are 100% NLC Brian, keep in mind that area of sky was glowing electric blue. The bands were prob trop cloud but the glow is from NLC diffuse veil. It was an unmistakable sight. The images have already been looked at by John Mc Farland from Armagh Observatory.
Diffuse type I displays arehazy glows with no structure. This is often how the season starts.
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