Noctilucent, or "night-shining," clouds (NLCs) are a spectacular optical nighttime phenomenon that is very often neglected in the context of atmospheric optics. This paper gives a brief overview of current understanding of NLCs by providing a simple physical picture of their formation, relevant observational characteristics, and scientific challenges of NLC research. Modern ground-based photographic NLC observations, carried out in the framework of automated digital camera networks around the globe, are outlined. In particular, the obtained results refer to studies of single quasi-stationary waves in the NLC field. These waves exhibit specific propagation properties-high localization, robustness, and long lifetime-that are the essential requisites of solitary waves.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.