Look up! Circumhorizontal arc!

ClareBroommaker's picture

In recent years, I think I look at the sky more often than I used to. Have seen some interesting things, such as a strange equilateral triangle cloud, iridescent clouds, numerous parhelions. This time my husband was with me and had his camera. Wikipedia helped me determine that others know this phenomenon as a circumhorizontal arc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumhorizontal_arc

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I love watching clouds. It's a permanently changing landscape available year-round, even at night.
I have a book on clouds somewhere and IIRC, there are eleven kinds of clouds.
The first ten were determined by some Victorian scientist.

Number eleven is modern: jet contrails are a kind of cloud.

That's a lovely picture. I haven't seen one of those.
I have seen rainbow rings around the full moon. Lovely and unearthly.

ClareBroommaker's picture

It is exciting to see these things, but all the better when it can be seen with others.

When I was a child there were not enough books to read in my house. I used almost try to desire into existence something to read. Thus, I tried to read whatever came into the house. When I was about 10 or 11 a book called "The Nature of Light and Colour in the Open Air" by M. Minnaert https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=30837361653&cm_sp=SEAR... appeared, brand new, from nowhere that I could fathom. Well, I gave it a try. It was full of equations that mean nothing to me even to this day, but it did give me the motivation to look for the phenomena that were illustrated. I ended up writing my name inside the cover and taking with me everywhere I've lived since.

That book is around here somewhere; I should look for it. I should see if my son wants it. Ironically my son is in optics, though at the level of photons rather than of atmosphere. I should pass the book on to him as a "classic."