Night Shining Clouds . ... Credit Copyright: Cloud Imaging Team ( LASP, Univ. Colorado ), AIM project , NASA Explanation: Alluring noctilucent or night-shining clouds lie near the edge of space, some 80 kilometers above Earth's surface. Of course, when viewed from space the clouds are more properly called polar mesospheric clouds (PMCs) -- seen here for the first time in image data from the Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) satellite. ... Black indicates no cloud data was available.) ...