************DONT GO TO THE IMAGE/LINK, GO TO THE ONE IN THE COMMENTS!!!!!!! OR THE ONE AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS MESSAGE! Last night around midnight, one could look up and see another Lunar Halo, which is a form of rainbow, owed to a secondary refraction of droplets forming a 22 degree halo about a light source- in this case, the Moon. We have seen these before, and often they tell of impending rain from an approaching system- cirrus clouds may precede systems ahead of the storm, resulting in upper level moisture, that, when aligned with a bright moon or simply the sun, can give us beautiful Halos or sun dogs, or circumzenithal arcs (these are not around the sun, but about a parihelic halos (asterisk within an asterisk- parihelic halo is not often coloured, but is a cloud-seeming-like encircling halo about the sun, off of which can stem sun dogs and other minor iridescent forms) radius away, extending, as an arc, AWAY from the sun, sort of like an adjacent halo to one you would draw around the sun). If you think you see a circumzenithal arc, immediately photograph it, because your eye might be missing a rare, completely encircling refraction called a Kern arc, which is essentially the grand daddy of circumzenithal optics, and the third cousin of iridescent cloud formations that are often even more impressive...but that is unlikely....only one has been photographed before...soo, yeah, rainbows and iridescence everybody -_- Physics of light is cool. AND PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE take and post pictures of the weather and atmosphere you see and post them here! Sunsets, Rainbows, just a pretty horizon- we can analyze every part of it to a science, or just admire your photography! Weather is everyones game! atoptics.co.uk/bows.htm
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 18:22:57 +0000