Earth’s highest, coldest, rarest clouds are back. How to see the eerie ‘noctilucent clouds’ this summer.

Lookup an hour or two after sundown and earlier than dawn over the following few months and you might even see ethereal blue, silver or golden streaks within the Northern Hemisphere’s northern skies. 

Referred to as noctilucent clouds (which means “night-shining” clouds in Latin)) or NLCs, these strange-looking patterns within the sky are the best, driest, coldest and rarest clouds on Earth, in accordance with a 2018 research of the phenomenon.