What is the brightest cloud?

Noctilucent clouds

Noctilucent clouds

Noctilucent clouds, or night shining clouds, are tenuous cloud-like phenomena in the upper atmosphere of Earth. When viewed from space, they are called polar mesospheric clouds (PMCs), detectable as a diffuse scattering layer of water ice crystals near the summer polar mesopause.

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Noctilucent cloud - Wikipedia

are extremely rare very high clouds seen in the night sky, usually on clear, summer nights. They become visible about the same time as the brightest stars and are usually bluish or silvery. Height of base: 200,000 feet.

What is a bright cloud called?

Before sunrise and after sunset, cirrus is often colored bright yellow or red. These clouds are lit up long before other clouds and fade out much later; some time after sunset they become gray.

What is the rarest cloud on earth?

Noctilucent clouds - the rarest clouds in the world - have glowed like shimmering cobwebs in the sky over the San Francisco Bay Area, US and experts think they were likely the result of a rocket launch.

What are the 3 highest clouds?

High-level clouds:

The three main types of high clouds are cirrus, cirrostratus, and cirrocumulus. Cirrus clouds are wispy, feathery, and composed entirely of ice crystals. They often are the first sign of an approaching warm front or upper-level jet streak.

What are the rare clouds that glow?

More Facts About Noctilucent Clouds

Noctilucent clouds or NLCs are Earth's highest clouds in the sky, literally glowing at the edge of space in the atmosphere's mesosphere layer, a high cold layer that is, according to NASA, “one hundred million times dryer than air from the Sahara desert.”

If You See One of Those Clouds Over Your City, Get Out Fast!

What is the prettiest type of cloud?

Nacreous or mother-of-pearl clouds, spotted over Kells, County Antrim, Northern Ireland. The mother-of-pearl colours of the stratospheric nacreous clouds make them one of the most beautiful formations.

How rare is rainbow cloud?

Cloud iridescence is relatively rare. The cloud must be thin and have lots of water droplets or ice crystals of about the same size. When that happens, the sun's rays encounter just a few droplets at at time.

What is the strongest cloud?

Cumulonimbus clouds are associated with extreme weather such as heavy torrential downpours, hail storms, lightning and even tornadoes.

What clouds look like giant cotton balls?

Cumulus clouds look like fluffy, white cotton balls in the sky. They are beautiful in sunsets, and their varying sizes and shapes can make them fun to observe! Stratus cloud often look like thin, white sheets covering the whole sky. Since they are so thin, they seldom produce much rain or snow.

What are fluffy clouds called?

Cumulus clouds are clouds that have flat bases and are often described as puffy, cotton-like, or fluffy in appearance. Their name derives from the Latin cumulus, meaning "heap" or "pile".

Has any human touched a cloud?

Unfortunately, it does not feel like cotton balls or cotton candy, but most people have technically touched a cloud before. If you wanted to touch an airborne cloud, the best way to do this is either skydiving or in a hot air balloon, though I would not want to be stuck in a cloud while in a hot air balloon.

Has a cloud ever touched the ground?

Some clouds are high up in the sky. Low clouds form closer to Earth's surface. In fact, low clouds can even touch the ground. These clouds are called fog.

What is the oldest cloud ever?

Astronomers have discovered the largest and oldest mass of water ever detected in the universe — a gigantic, 12-billion-year-old cloud harboring 140 trillion times more water than all of Earth's oceans combined.

What do rainbow clouds mean?

Iridescent clouds, known as "fire rainbows" or "rainbow clouds," occur when sunlight diffracts off water droplets in the atmosphere. And the recipe for these heavenly sights is actually pretty simple. Like common cloud-to-ground rainbows, iridescent clouds usually accompany thunderstorms.

What is the largest cloud in the universe?

Misty reservoir would fill 140 trillion Earth oceans, scientists say. In a galaxy 12 billion light-years away resides the most distant and most massive cloud of water yet seen in the universe, astronomers say.

What is the little rainbow in the sky?

This phenomenon is called cloud iridescence. This occurs when sunlight shines through water droplets or ice crystals that make up the cloud in such a way that light scatters and reflects the colors of the rainbow, a process also known as diffraction.

What are blanket clouds called?

Strato-form

From the Latin word for 'layer' these clouds are usually broad and fairly wide spread appearing like a blanket. They result from non-convective rising air and tend to occur along and to the north of warm fronts. The edges of strato-form clouds are diffuse.

Why are clouds grey?

As the size and concentration of the hydrometeors increases, less and less sunlight penetrates the cloud, resulting in multiple scattering. We perceive these clouds as dark clouds in varying shades of grey.

What are the clouds that do not move?

Some clouds, like the lenticular clouds that form over hills, are stationary even when the wind is strong. (Actually we get fooled into thinking nothing is moving.

What cloud is closest to Earth?

Stratus clouds are horizontal and stratified, or layered. Stratus clouds can blanket the entire sky in a single pattern. They usually occur close to the Earth.

Which cloud brings rain?

Among the various types of clouds, three are responsible for most precipitation that falls to Earth: they are stratus, cumulus, and nimbus. These clouds are capable of producing both rain and snow, mostly by combining in hybrid formations.

What is the rarest rainbow called?

Multiple Rainbows

One of the rarest forms is multiple, or double, rainbows. They occur when several rainbows form in the same place at the same time. It takes at least one primary rainbow to generate this sight, as well as several other secondary rainbows. There is always space in between each one.

Are 3 rainbows rare?

Few people have ever claimed to see three rainbows arcing through the sky at once. In fact, scientific reports of these phenomena, called tertiary rainbows, were so rare -- only five in 250 years -- that until now many scientists believed sightings were as fanciful as Leprechaun's gold at a rainbow's end.

Are bubble clouds rare?

The spectacular bubbly clouds are officially known as mammatus and are extremely rare because they can only be seen when they are low in the sky and lit up by sunlight.