Cloud Iridescence
Alright, so this isn't necessarily fine art, but it's an interesting picture to me. It shows a phenomenon known as "iridescence" that occurs somewhat commonly in thin clouds, or the thin edges of thicker clouds, as is the case here. These colors are caused by diffraction of sunlight as it passes through the cloud. The sun itself is just above the top edge of the picture. While the colors are real, the're quite exaggerated here so they're easily visible. To the naked eye, the glare of the sun would normally render these colors almost, if not completely, invisible. They're more easily visible to the naked eye if you have dark sunglasses on. Even so, at their best they're most often washed out and pale, but they're visible if you just look. Be careful if you do, because looking in the direction of the sun can permanently damage your eyesight. Wait till the sun has disappeared behind the edge of a passing cloud, and look to see if you can catch a glimpse of some of these colors in the edges of the cloud. Quite often, you can see them, and once you do, you'll have seen something beautiful that most people never know about, or bother to notice.
Emergence: The (hypersaturated) color displayed in the cloud, which is in somewhat chaotic motion, is due to the relatively uniform size and distribution of the water droplets within the cloud. The color depends both on the droplet size and the angular distance from the sun. If the droplet size is completely uniform, a circular chromatic diffraction pattern appears. Given that there are two independent variables, though, the shape of the colored regions and the color displayed can vary greatly.
Comments and faves
Squilk, SkyWire7, crazypeaches66@hotmail.com, Fight Club boy, and 28 other people added this photo to their favorites.
*dans (59 months ago | reply)
very impressive iridescent clouds!
it's almost the same day that we saw this rare meteorological phenomenon at different area on earth.
btw, I also use D200 now.
nice to know you.
Let's Keep looking up together!
iloverainstorms (59 months ago | reply)
and it is absolutly beautiful!!!! It's God's art
Lukke03 [deleted] (59 months ago | reply)
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carolynwiggins903 (59 months ago | reply)
What a wonderful shot!! Thanks or sharing.
DrHobo (59 months ago | reply)
I do love orange and red; I'm assuming this was taken with a poloriser (going off the really strong blue)
Tim Stone (59 months ago | reply)
shisha2706 (59 months ago | reply)
I live in scotland and we quiet often get this phenomenon, sometimes the sky looks like it's on fire, the clouds form a sandy beach effect, you know where the sea leaves waves in the sand, it was so beautiful people stopped their cars to look, sadly I didn't have my camera with me
claudette 12 (58 months ago | reply)
What an amazing phenomenon, it's hard to believe it's real. Glad you were able to capture it. Beautiful photo.
Rolo. [deleted] (56 months ago | reply)
cool
jalalspages (56 months ago | reply)
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ohmann alianne (53 months ago | reply)
orange and blue are my favorite colors, because of the way the sunrise and sunset can look sometimes.
you captured it so perfectly =)
Catherine Cartwright (26 months ago | reply)
Very nice!
lovely flowers1 (25 months ago | reply)
You've done it again! Spectacular!