A volunteer with the NASA-supported Space Cloud Watch project built a machine-learning tool to help identify noctilucent, or night-shining, clouds, according to a report published Aug 14, 2026. The project asks people worldwide to photograph these clouds, which appear more often and lower in the sky than in the past, so scientists can study factors behind the changes, such as shifts in Earth's long-term weather patterns.

Volunteer Namai Chandra noticed project leaders were manually verifying images and proposed an automated screening approach that keeps human judgment for the most important cases. He contacted project scientists Chihoko Cullens and Brentha Thurairajah, then trained the pipeline on both noctilucent clouds and lower-altitude look-alikes often submitted to the project. The tool combines pre-screening, cloud classification and confidence-based review routing.

After development and testing, Chandra released the identification tool, which the report said contributors and project scientists were using to check or flag images.