Thursday, August 14, 2008

Caught A Rainbow

Luckily with the constant summer showers I was able to catch several rainbows. The one pictured below was the best of the bunch. It was just a simple rainbow no secondary arc.


Straight from the fire escape at the end of the mini-storm. I learned the easiest way to find a rainbow is while it's raining wait for sun to come out and then turn your back to the sun.


Sure the technical way to locate a rainbow is look for a multicolored arc at a 42° radius, with an option of a secondary inverse rainbow at 51° radius. The problem is that most people can't judge these exact degrees. Also trying to capture a secondary bow with a lower end digital camera is tough.

As long as you have small water drops then the light entering it can refract and separate into the seven colors we see.

Monday, July 14, 2008

Science In The Sky

Besides the boring engineering stuff I have to do for college and the Excel sheets and all the MATLAB code I try and take scientific photos.

I got the book National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Weather and they have over 350 beautifully colored pages of different weather phenomena. My plan is to duplicate each photo subject through my window.

First up is the Optical Phenomena.

Can you guess what is pictured?

A closer view may help.


Finally a broad shot.

The first two pictures were of sun dogs and the last also has a halo.

Sun dogs are known more formally as parhelia they often appear in pairs but in this case only one was visible. They can be solid white light or as seen more of a rainbow effect with the red closer to the sun and blue away from the sun. They are found to the right or left of the sun on the same plane and seen at a 22-24 degree distance.

This one had an accompanying parhelic circle or halo. Haloes are formed when light gets refracted through ice crystals in cirriform clouds. The ice crystals must be hexagonal with two flat ends.

Now this phenomina can occur all over the country and at any time of year but is most common in the southwest and before and after storms.

Today's Links: http://www.atoptics.co.uk/