Night Shining.

Noctilucent clouds are a phenomenon best seen in the deep twilight of the Summer months, sometimes in great ghostly sheets of delicate iridescent electric filigree that span the Northern horizon, similar to the display which graced the skies over Edinburgh very early this morning.

Although not completely understood, and having only been reported consistently since 1885, these clouds of ice crystals - whose name is Latin for night shining - form around 50 miles above the Earth and are seen from temperate latitudes at night as they reflect sunlight from over the polar regions; interestingly more over Arctic than Antarctic latitudes, and may possibly be linked to climate change, with an increase in greenhouse gas emissions leading to a cooling in the mesosphere where the clouds form - leading to greater occurrences of this mysterious spectacle.