Noctilucent clouds — the rarest clouds in the world — glowed like shimmering cobwebs in the sky over the San Francisco Bay Area early Friday morning.
Bay Area early Friday morning, and experts think they were likely the result of a rocket launch.
The National Weather Service confirmed Bay Area residents were indeed looking at noctilucent clouds just before sunrise, and the the clouds' occurrence is highly unusual. The clouds are most prevalent in the polar regions at the North and South Poles. When they do appear on the West Coast, which isn't often, they more commonly form in the Pacific Northwest.
Noctilucent clouds form when water droplets crystallize around fine dust particles, resulting in clouds of ice that can reflect light from the sun. The process occurs high in the atmosphere's mesosphere, where temperatures are colder than -180 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the. While most clouds float no more than 10 miles above Earth, noctilucent clouds are some 50 miles up in the sky.
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