Sharing the Passion for Mars, this week on planetary radio.

Welcome, I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society with more of the human adventure across our

solar system and beyond. The Humans to Mars Summit returned to the U.S.

Capitol in mid-May will share the closing panel of Martian All-Stars and their inspiring words.

Then you get to hear me sing, sort of.

In this week's What's Up segment with Bruce Betts. Astronomers always wish each other clear skies,

but Planetary Society senior editor Emily Lockawala

reminds us that there's a lot to be said

for other fluffy objects in the sky, no matter where that sky is.

Welcome back, Emily.

You know, one of the prettiest sites we get to witness here on Earth, at least in my humble

opinion, it's so interesting to learn that there is a direct parallel

to this on Mars and that in both cases this phenomenon has a name that I've never heard before.

Yes, we're talking about noctilucant clouds and you can figure out what that means by looking at the word

roots, so noctus, night and looser light. So these are clouds that shine even after sunset because they're so high in elevation that to them the sun is still up.

You can see them in certain seasons. It's especially helpful to have long sun sets, so at

northern latitudes and far southern latitudes are more likely to see them. It also

helps to have very high altitude water making these wispy serious clouds.

They just light up like these ethereal feathery constructions.

They're just gorgeous and curiosity has been seeing and even filming them on Mars in the last couple of weeks.

These are really stunning videos.

I know we throw that word around a lot here, but then there's a lot of stunning stuff on and also above Mars.

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