Pages Tagged “sky”
Blog Posts
- Blue Sunsets on Mars
One of many cool facts brought up in Phil Plait’s new book, Under Alien Skies is that Martian sunsets are blue! On Earth, nitrogen scatters light randomly, with bluer colors scattering more than redder colors, so the ambient sky is blue, but when you’re looking toward the sun at a shallow angle (like sunrise or […]
- Smoky Orange Sun
We’ve had some ash fall over the past week, but the air quality at ground level has only been awful, not unbearable. But the light has just been wrong.
- Bright the hawk’s flight on the empty sky.
I find myself thinking of “The Creation of Éa” every time I see a hawk in the distance.
- Bisected Halo
A clear 22-degree halo around the sun, bright enough that I didn’t have to adjust the image afterward. This is straight from my phone. Even cooler: you can actually see the contrail’s shadow on the layer of cloud that’s producing the halo! The sun is behind the tree, and while the contrail pops out so […]
- Dreariest Circumhorizon Arc Ever
I could barely see any colors in the cloud at all without my polarized sunglasses, and when I took a photo through them, I still had to bump up the saturation. I’ve seen several of these over the years. The brightest one was nine years ago, while the longest was just last year. It’s a […]
- Tangent in the Sky
When I first started paying attention to solar ice halos, I read about tangent arcs. But this is the first time I’m sure I’ve seen one. The tangent arcs appear above and below the sun, branching out from the 22° circular halo (which you can see here, very faintly), and change shape depending on how […]
- Pumpkin Pie Moon
I suggest that a deep orange moon right before Christmas be called a Pumpkin Pie Moon.
- Latte Art in the Sky
A hole-punch cloud, also known as a fall-streak hole, seen from Redondo Beach, looking toward LAX airport. These form when an airplane passes through a thin cloud layer, disrupting the cloud.
- Rainbow Cloud
A brilliant circumhorizon arc fragment seen above Los Angeles. I went to lunch at exactly the right time, and judging by Instagram, a lot of people saw it.
- Look up in the sky!
You may never seen a halo around the sun or a sundog next to it, but they’re actually quite common. You just have to look up. (Just don’t stare at the sun!) I usually keep an eye out for sun halos whenever there’s a thin cloud layer, since there usually aren’t ice crystals near the […]
- Sun Halo Behind a Plant Frame
Photo: I spotted this great circular halo while we were out shopping for our garden. A frame was perfect to block the sun and keep the halo visible.
- St Patrick’s Day Moon and Jupiter
I almost missed this near-approach, but fortunately I had to make an early-evening grocery run and looked up at the sky.
- Moon and Jupiter Conjunction
Two views of the moon/Jupiter conjunction of January 21, 2013, one taken with a phone and the other with a somewhat better camera.
- Fire Dragon
Photo of clouds lit up by the setting sun, resembling a dragon or a giant phoenix.
- Moon Photo & New Camera
I wanted to run out and try it out with scenic photos on a beautiful March afternoon, but had to charge the batteries first. I got a great shot of the moon that evening.
- Post-Storm Beach Sunset (Photos)
I drove down to the nearest beach after work to catch the sunset and clouds. I also got to see rain over Santa Monica and clouds above Catalina.
- Orange Sunset & Double Rainbow Over LA (Photos)
We’ve had a couple of storms run through Los Angeles over the past week. Last Friday, I went up to the top of a parking structure after work to look at the clouds, and stayed to watch a double rainbow and the play of light at sunset.
- Rays from the Anti-Sun!
Photo: Yes, you can see sun rays when looking *away* from the sun.
- Mental Photo of the Day
I watched an airplane fly past the barely crescent moon on approach to landing, at a distance such that they looked the same size.
- Feathery Not-a-Rainbow Cloud
Always carry your camera. You never know when you’re going to spot something rare and fleeting, like a flattened “rainbow” in a cirrus cloud.
- Halo Mosaic
Picture of a full 22-degree halo around the sun in a light cloud layer, stitched together from four photos.
- Venus and Mercury!?
At the age of 34, I’ve finally seen the planet Mercury. It’s close to Venus for a few days, and I managed to spot it from a grocery store parking lot.
- Coffee Halo
Photo of a halo around the sun, with the sun itself blocked by a coffee mug. Behold…COFFEE!
- ¾ Sun Halo
I spotted a great 22° halo around the sun this morning, almost by accident. There was a reflection in the rear window of the car in front of me that looked like it could be a distorted contrail or it could be a distorted halo. Once I parked, I looked — and there was this […]
- Contrail Shadow, Halo, Haze & Sundog
Photos – It was a good morning for seeing interesting cloud and light formations in the sky.
- Halo Triplet
Photo of three halos around the sun: a 22-degree circular halo, a circumscribed halo, and a sundog.
- Maxfield Parrish Sky
Photo: I stepped out of the office building and felt like I’d stepped into a Maxfield Parrish painting. The whole sky looked like this.
- Partly Cloudy, Late Afternoon
- Sundog
Friday was a good day for atmospheric optics. I watched a sundog for most of my drive home.
- Reach for the Sky
Spotted in Old Town San Diego.
- Halo and Shadow: Cloud Optics Two-Fer
Yesterday morning while driving to work, I looked up from the road and saw two parallel lines in the sky: One white, one dark blue. They were, of course, a contrail and its shadow on a thin cloud layer below. Because it was a thin layer, I started looking (when I had the chance) for […]
- Night Sky
There’s something to be said for a night sky with so many stars that Sirius doesn’t stand out quite so much.
- No Comet For You!
I had hoped that the darker skies near San Simeon on the central California coast would have made it easier to spot Comet Lulin, but no such luck. First the clouds rolled in around sunset. I checked around 9:45 and they’d cleared enough to see very clearly out toward the ocean, but the lights of […]
- Moon and Venus Above Palms
- Yellow Clouds at Sunset & Herringbone Moon
Last Thursday evening, this was the view from one of the office windows. Later that night, I took this photo. Or rather, these photos, since it’s a composite of two, one which picked up the herringbone pattern of the clouds and one which picked up the moon and the corona surrounding it.
- Stellar Triangle
I managed to get a few shots of the near-conjunction of the crescent moon, Jupiter and Venus tonight before they sank into the haze. The first two shots were taken at twilight (well, dusk, really), around 5:05–5:10 PM PST, while the third was taken at 5:30, after night had fallen.
- Halo & Sundog
While driving toward the sun a little after 1:00 this afternoon, I noticed a faint reddish, slightly upturned patch in the sky ahead of me, and realized it was probably the bottom edge of a 22° sun halo. I was surprised, since the cloud cover looked too heavy for it, but it was there. At […]
- Jupiter and Venus
This is actually from a couple of nights ago, but the view as I left the office tonight was about the same (though the lights were just starting to turn on in this picture). It’s really odd to walk out of the building into a lot that’s normally lighted (even when I head in to […]
- Smoke Plume Above Trees
Smoke from various fires up near Los Angeles and Corona, creeping across the sky into Orange County.
- Orange Clouds (no rain)
The sunset view as I left the office this evening. The clouds turned even deeper orange over the drive home, with streamers of pink running halfway across the sky.
- Ragged Clouds at Sunrise
View from our back yard this morning. I had to tweak the colors a bit to approximate what it looked like to the naked eye. It’s still not quite right — there was a bit more pink in it, and maybe a bit less purple. Sometimes it’s worth getting up at this hour.
- Purple Sunset
On Monday evening, I looked out the front window and saw an unusually purple sky. I immediately went out to snap a few pictures, though the camera tried to adjust the exposure too much in most of them, making it really light. This one turned out very close to what I actually saw. Since then, […]
- Pack of Sundogs
Last Wednesday, on my drive home from work, I spotted a sundog on the way home from work. I finally snapped it when I pulled into the parking lot at Trader Joe’s. The picture on the left was the best of the set, with the best contrast. The red is clearly visible on the end […]
- Rainbow Feather Cloud
On my way back to work after lunch today, I looked out the window and saw this feathery wisp of cloud with a clear rainbow pattern running from red at the the top to violet in the middle, then turning plain white below. As I drove south, the colors moved down the cloud, disappearing entirely […]
- Stringy Clouds at Sunset
Sunset on Tuesday, March 25th, with feathery cirrus clouds and contrails. A faint sundog is visible as a slight brightening at the level of the sun, about 2/3 of the way across the picture.
- Sunset
View from the office parking lot earlier this evening:
- Contrail Contrast
I had to get up early today, early enough that I could still see a couple of stars (or more likely planets, but I’ve lost track of where most of them are right now). When I got to work, I was treated to the sight of these contrails lit up against the morning sky. The […]
- Halos and Rainbows and Clouds, Oh My!
Whenever there’s a light layer of cirrus clouds in the sky, I keep an eye out for halos. I catch the occasional iridescent cloud, or a faint sundog that’s only visible through sunglasses. Today I spotted a 22° halo as I walked back to my car after lunch, around 2:00pm on March 6. It’s not […]
- Corona
Spotted this on Thursday, between rain showers. It’s a slightly distorted corona, formed by diffraction of sunlight around cloud droplets, splitting the spectrum and producing rainbow-like colors. According to the Atmospheric Optics site, the distortion indicates that the droplet size varies across different parts of the cloud. This was shot through a window, and I’m […]
- Golden Lining
Friday, September 28: Adding to the mish-mash of photo sources on here, this is a still frame from a video clip taken out the window of the car. It wasn’t supposed to be a video clip, but my camera has a sliding switch for selecting photo/video/review, and it has a tendency to shift while in […]
- Cobweb-cloud sunset
I stepped out of the office last Thursday (September 27—it was a good week for interesting late-afternoon skies) and saw this view to the west. The clouds glowing as if from within, and the curved bands as if the whole set had been dragged across the sky, reminded me a bit of pictures of reflection […]
- Sundog
Spotted a sundog last Wednesday (September 26), about an hour(?) before sunset. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s what it was, given the positioning, the brightness, and the reddish coloring on the end nearest the sun. The sharp edges of the reflecting cloud (a fragment of a contrail?) make it look a bit odd, though, […]
- Rays of Light
Every once in a while, I manage to get a decent shot with my cell phone camera (currently a RAZR V3T). Taken August 4 at 6:20pm. Cleaned up slightly to remove a digital glitch just above the cloud.
- Invasion of the Lenticular Clouds!
I wasn’t expecting to see more after my last post on lenticular clouds. As I said, they’re (usually) rare in this area. But as I left the office Friday evening, I pulled onto the freeway and nearly freaked out at what I saw: A line of three smooth, layered clouds running above the ridge of […]
- Lenticular Cloud Over Irvine
One of the problems with photographing clouds is that you can’t run and grab a better camera. You have to shoot with what you have, or they’ll change configuration and quite possibly look completely different by the time you get back. As I left for a late lunch today, I saw a set of half-discs […]
- Contrail Shadow
With any luck I’ll finally post about last week’s trip to Las Vegas soon, but meanwhile, here’s something interesting that we spotted a couple of times on the drive back: The shadow of a contrail against the sky. Here’s what it looked like, as the camera saw it. Actually, it was much more visible at […]
- Two Sunsets
Just after sunset on Wednesday, February 7. Just before sunset on Monday, February 12.
- Comet!
The skies were surprisingly clear today. Four of us at work walked outside after sunset to a bridge near the office, and saw Comet McNaught. It was visible from ~5:10/5:15 to 5:28, at which point it slipped below the line of hills to the west. We saw it against the red sky, slowly dropping through […]
- Evening Skies
Here are a couple of photos, one just before sunset, the other just after, over the past month. First up is a twilight view of South Coast Plaza. On Friday the 13th, we went to the nearest Borders to pick up The End of Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events and Neil Gaiman’s new short […]
- Smoke and Fog
Monday morning dawned foggy. By the time we left for work, most of the fog had burned off, but we looked out the car window and saw a huge, billowing gray cloud hugging close to the ground. If this had been the usual fire season, or if there had been no fog to start with […]
- Sunrise, Sunset
The first photo is from Wednesday morning around 8:00. Katie took it on our drive to work. There’s actually another shot that shows more of the sky, but this one is more striking. The second shows tonight’s sunset as seen from the Metro Pointe parking lot. Yes, it’s a freeway in the foreground, but the […]
- Daystar!
I saw the planet Venus four times on my walk to and from lunch today! Yes, in broad daylight! Someone on Slashdot mentioned it was possible last week. I took it seriously because back in high school, I used to watch Venus fade into the brightening sky on winter mornings. Often I could still find […]
- The Moon and Venus, sitting in a tree
This view of the Moon and Venus was taken from our apartment balcony earlier this evening. I also took a picture yesterday, from the top of a parking structure near John Wayne Airport (we went to a show at UCI later that evening.) You can see the red trail an airplane left as it crossed […]
- That Belt of Venus Thing
About a month ago I posted about noticing the Belt of Venus—the red band that circles the entire horizon just after sunset—and the Earth’s shadow on the sky. I snapped this picture on the drive home this evening. This is looking east, away from the setting sun. If you look at the right edge of […]
- Look, up in the sky!
A few nights ago I was walking around sunset, and decided to look for something that had been mentioned last week on the Astronomy Picture of the Day: the Belt of Venus. Somehow I’d never noticed that after sunset, the band of red encircles the entire sky at the horizon. Even more amazing, if you […]
- Cloud Cover-Up
Today was a reminder that just having cloud cover doesn’t necessarily keep things cool. We’ve had occasional wispy clouds at evening, and at one point some serious cloud cover closer to the coast, but today was hazy and overcast all day—and it was just plain muggy. Eh, it’s only early August. It’ll get hotter (and […]
- Clouds on the Horizon
Well, June Gloom seems to be over, and we’re now into the time of year when we get hot, sunny days with lots of clouds. Big, towering cumulus clouds, often with anvil heads, promising shade and rain to cool things down. The teases. Yeah, we see those clouds most afternoons—on the horizon, just on the […]