One of the Hive Overmind brains sent me a link to a very cool gallery of pictures of the sky on Discover Magazine’s website. There are arcs, halos, aurorae, and mirages, all displayed for you in a very pretty way.
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I love keeping my eye on the sky; now that winter is here ice crystals in the air abound, providing all sorts of lovely refractive and diffractive and interference effects. It’s one of the best shows on Earth… or above it, and it’s free. All you have to do it look up.
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Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
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December 5th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Another proof for chemtrails! Say what you want Bad Astronomer, but no interference can explain this, and besides nothing like that happened 20 years ago!
Your daily dose of conspiracy by yours truly.
December 5th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Very cool. I used to see some incredible sun–dogs during the winter in Alberta.
December 5th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
AHA! Observe the fleet of at least six UFOs lurking in the lower portion of this optical effect. Note also the Borg cube blotting out the sun.
Purty stuff. I just got some photos of pink flaming clouds tonight that I’m going to post on my site.
December 5th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Thanks for sharing, things like this are what keep me leaving the lab even though my interests mainly lie in the microscopic.
December 5th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
too cool
December 5th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
OH MY GOD THERE’LL BE A EARTHQUAKE!
…Or not. Pretty pretty cloud.
December 6th, 2008 at 4:32 am
Don’t let that crazy rainbow/chemtrail/HAARP lady see this.
December 6th, 2008 at 5:55 am
There’s a lot of incredible beauty in the natural world all around us, but too many of us are too busy to take notice of it and pass it by without ever taking the time to stop and take it in. As the famous golfer Walter Hagen once said, “take the time to stop and smell the roses.”
Last night, for example, the sky was cold and clear here, and one could see Jupiter set — it went from apparent white and faded into orange as it settled towards the horizon. Simple, yes, but when one realizes that it’s a planet and not Sol setting, it was a rare and beautiful sight.
December 6th, 2008 at 7:09 am
No green flash? Nonetheless a wonderful group of phenomena.
There are wonderful things to see out there, and there is also some very interesting science in even the most common of phenomena. There are still effects which are not well understood and though the observation of such effects has been ongoing for millenia, it is still an active area of research. I just gave a talk on this as a colloquium to our department in an effort to get people to notice more of these stunning sights.
Here’s my take on iridescent clouds over Paris: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonstraveladventures/2623975841/
December 6th, 2008 at 8:07 am
Some gorgeous lenticular clouds were seen over Mt. Ranier recently:
www.komonews.com/weather/blog/35631614.html