Noctilucent Cloud

An early stage in the evolution of the noctilucent cloud, 21 minutes after liftoff.
Half an hour after launch a few die-hard photographers await the dawn. The now vacant Pad 39A is still illuminated.
Some 33 minutes after liftoff the sky show had swollen to cover half the sky and still held me spellbound.
At the same time, another portion of the sky....
...while further to the east curls had developed.
These curls drifted out to sea, as if to meet the sun, which was still below the horizon.

Six minutes after lift-off an hour-long amazing sky show of the stratospheric exhaust trail lit by the still-below the horizon sun began. This noctilucent cloud evolved over the next hour through white, pink, purple, cyan, yellow, orange, grey and black.

It began as an amazingly bright white cloud, and nine minutes later colour appeared. Faint at first, these colours intensified over a span of two minutes. This evolution was driven both by the slow drift of winds in both the stratosphere and the troposphere, and by the changing illumination as the sun rose to meet the eastern horizon.

By 6:50 am dawn colours began to illuminate the lower parts of this cloud. Six minutes later a helicopter circled and landed near the Vehicle Assembly Building before taking off again and chattering off into the distance.

The next page is an animation of the formation of a portion of the noctilucent cloud.

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