Trimethyl Aluminum Clouds over Norway | NASA Earth Science

Trimethyl Aluminum Clouds over Norway | NASA Earth Science

These clouds are completely harmless, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center reports. Twisting clouds of trimethyl aluminum (TMA) appeared over Norway on Nov. 10, 2024, during a minor geomagnetic storm. Ivar Sandland photographed them from Narvik, a small town inside the Arctic Circle. Moments earlier, Sandland watched a rocket climb through colorful auroras. "It was a rocket launch from Andoya Space Center in northern Norway," he explains. "Moments later, the clouds appeared."

NASA's rocket carried 16 canisters of trimethyl aluminum. These were released into the upper atmosphere. Glowing clouds were visible from the ground, allowing researchers to study waves and vortices in air ~100 km above Earth's surface—a region which also contains the turbopause. This is fundamental research that may help improve computer models of our planet's atmosphere.

The turbopause, also called the homopause, marks the altitude in an atmosphere below which turbulent mixing dominates.

Earth's turbopause lies near the mesopause, at the intersection of the mesosphere and the thermosphere, at an altitude of roughly 90 km (56 mi). Other turbopauses in the Solar System that are known include Venus' turbopause at about 130–135 km (81–84 mi), Mars' at about 130 km (81 mi), Jupiter's at roughly 385 km (239 mi), and Titan's at around 800–850 km (500–530 mi). 

Earth's turbopause was discovered by French scientists following the firing of two Véronique sounding rockets on March 10 and 12, 1959.

Image Credit: Ivar Sandland
Caption Credit: SpaceWeather[dot]com
Image Date: Nov. 10, 2024
Release Date: Nov. 12, 2024

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