Pages Tagged “sun”
Blog Posts
- 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.
- 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.
- Missed Transit
No luck catching the transit of Venus, but hey, at least I got to see the eclipse last month!
- 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.
- 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.
- Partly Cloudy, Late Afternoon
- Sun Rays
A complex display of crepuscular rays lighting up a haze of smoke drifting in from the Station Fire. This next shot, taken from a 4th story window, isn’t framed as well, but shows off the complexity better.
- Sundog
Friday was a good day for atmospheric optics. I watched a sundog for most of my drive home.
- 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 […]
- 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 […]
- 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 […]
- Halo 360
As I was about to get into the car after lunch, I spotted a full-circle halo around the sun. I’m fairly certain it’s a 22º halo based on the size.