On the flight from Frankfurt to Shanghai, 21/22 July 2008

Glints on the Baltic Sea (I think) from the low Sun as the plane heads towards the Northeast.

Sunset colors ... but then the real show began as the plane moved farther North: There was never darkness, the sky stayed a moderately bright blue, but in front of it ...

... noctilucent clouds! Which were seen the same night from space over Mongolia, too, as well as from Vienna and many other places.

Even with progressing dawn, the NLCs remained visible easily. Only short exposure times at low ISO settings were required to capture them.

And then the Sun rose again, only a couple dozens degrees to the right of where it had set: the result of the high northern latitude of the plane and its slowling changing heading.

The Sun was extremely bright, even directly on the horizon, and it was very hard to actually get the camera to record the nice atmospheric distortions.

Soon it was way too bright to photograph or look at.

On approach to Shanghai finally the display system was turned on, so the rough trajectory of this flight could be seen.

An auspicious beginning for an exciting journey ...