Scozmo's Photery

I recently re-blogged a post from 2025 that showed the Noctilucent cloud shows from June of that year which, spookily happened again on exactly the same date this year. Of course, there’s nothing spooky about it, it’s that time of year but, in my mind, to have clear skies AND Noctis on the same night 365 days apart!!! Hmmmmm

First, what are Noctilucent clouds?

Noctilucent Clouds – Everything you need to know (allegedly)

Noctilucent Clouds – BBC Sky at Night

Noctilucent Cloud Images

I subscribe to a Citizen Science project to monitor the appearances of them all over the world, I report sightings and negative sightings every year. The Aurora app I use, Glendale Aurora, also gives notifications and gathers sightings from all over the world.

As far as I recall, my first sight of them ever, was through our living room window one night/morning when i guess i couldn’t sleep.

This was June 23rd 2022, we had only been in this house for two months, I had never seen nor ever tried to photograph anything like this before.

That one was a phone pic! I was outside and blown away by what i was seeing. I think we have seen them every year since then and they are stunning, spooky, ethereal, beautiful, add to that the almost complete silence here and it is a fabulous experience. Please note, I don’t wait up for them, I set up a camera now and set it to interval timed shots but if I do waken, I am out there.

I was awake last year for a display and took a set of panorama shots which I had printed onto canvas.

I put those into a local craft style shop, see if it sold but no, nothing ventured right? 🙂

Anyway, I digress, noctis so far this year. The weather obviously plays a big part in seeing them at all and we’ve had more than our fair share of dreich this year so it’s been great when the sky has cleared and the clouds have appeared.

It was June 9th when I spotted the first pale clouds. I must add, look for the pale blue/white strips of cloud.

When I set up the camera, it is either in a North facing window, if I don’t know what the weather is going to do, or outside against the North facing wall of the house, invisible to any passers by, I’m laughing to myself, there are three houses here, the only other passers by are delivery drivers so the camera is pretty safe out there 🙂

I have found it difficult getting the settings right, it is so light here just now, it never actually gets fully dark and I try to capture the first sight of the clouds, often when the sky is still too light but, I have imptoved at guessing. The camera is set on interval timer at 15 second intervals and I or Photoshop stitches them together into a time-lapse video clip. I try not to edit them too much, I always try to keep my images as close to reality as possible.

That is the clip from the same night, June 9th into 10th morning. I currently start it off at 23:45 and switch off around 2 am but the last few have run until 3 am.

“Nichts are fair drawin’ in”, as we Scots say 🙂

I set it up again on the 10th/11th but there was too much cloud cover, which sometimes makes for an interesting video clip anyway, not everyone has seen the clouds move faster than reality and it can be amazing, they often move in different dirctions at different levels!

Because I subscribe to the Citizen Science project, i also pull out a set of images from the full set and share them on that platform to give a view of how they looked throughout the night and morning.

I still never forget how lucky we are to have that view, almost totally unpolluted and in silence. North is actually through that tree on the right.

It was June 12th before I got another opportunity to photograph this amazing phenomenon.

You can just see them in that set, almost hidden by lower, dark clouds. To better see and display the clouds, especially on the CitiSci project, I then cropped those in to show more of the Noctis.

That is a selection of the same set of shots from above, I now select them at 30 minute intervals so there’s some formality to them, just my brain I guess 🙂 i.e. Start at 23:45, if they are on display immediately, I use that, then midnight, 00:30, 01:00 and so on until they disappear or the Sun comes up 🙂

I didn’t make a time-lapse clip of those.

June 20th a clear sky looked good so I set up, remember what i said about getting the settings right? Look how bright this one starts and ends.

Very pale noctis that night. Don’t forget you can click or tap all images to view larger, apart from the slideshows.

A wee digress ….. sometimes the noctis don’t show but the sky looks beautiful anyway 🙂

I loved those pale clouds and the streaks along the horizon. That was June 22nd at 23:09 🙂

Once again, you can just make them out high in the sky.

June 28th gave us one of the best showings so far.

A pale start and lots of dark, lower cloud around.

Once the low cloud started to clear, the Noctilucent cloud show began.

The movement of those beautiful glowing clouds is magical in my opinion, slow motion is a pay option in the editor I use so these are as-shot and created by Photoshop, not slow-mo.

So, that is the story of Noctilucent clouds so far in 2026, I am hoping to see many more, maybe even stay awake or get up and capture another panorama shot of the event. I will add that there have been more into July but I’m saving those, maybe do another monthly post.

Stay safe and well.

our night sky

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