Tag: sky

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A mosaic of four photos I took this afternoon of a full 22° halo around the sun. It was extremely hazy, and the halo was almost impossible to see without sunglasses because of the glare. I actually stopped the exposure down in order to get the halo.

A few minutes earlier (and a few miles away) I also saw a faint fragment of a circumhorizontal arc. Oddly enough, it was the same time of day, time of year, direction of the sky, and stretch of road as the last one I saw! If I drove that stretch of road regularly, I wouldn’t be so surprised, but I’m only rarely in that area at lunchtime.

Update: About a month later, I saw a really clear circumhorizon arc (or rainbow cloud)…from my office building’s parking lot!

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Venus and Mercury

At the age of 34, I’ve finally seen the planet Mercury.* It’s notoriously difficult to spot, but when I read that it was going to be very close to Venus for the next few days, I had to try.

As it turns out, I was able to see it from a local grocery store parking lot. I left the car just as Venus was becoming visible, concerned by the clouds starting to drift past, and left the store to a clear twilight sky and a “star” below and to the right of Venus…exactly where Mercury should be!

*Of course I’ve seen photos, but I’d never seen the planet directly with my own eyes — or if I have, I didn’t recognize it.

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I spotted a great 22° halo around the sun this morning, almost by accident. There was a reflection in the rear window of the car in front of me that looked like it could be a distorted contrail or it could be a distorted halo. Once I parked, I looked — and there was this clear halo, almost 3/4 of the circle. The missing quadrant was to the lower right, so I just framed this to get as much of the visible part as I could.

It wasn’t really this blue. The G1 tends to make images in daylight a little extra blue, and seems to have really gone overboard on this one. I’ve got to remember to bring the regular camera with me more often!

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While driving around lunchtime, I saw an airplane pass overhead, its contrail casting a shadow on the thin cloud layer below. I had my camera handy, and was stopped at an intersection, so I snapped a couple of shots. As often seems to happen, the first, haphazard one was the best.

The diagonal line extending down from the sun is, I believe, a sun pillar-like effect in the trails left by the windshield wipers. Also: Unless I’m mistaken, you can just barely see the edge of a halo in the feathery clouds at bottom center. It’s the slight reddening.

A few hours earlier, I saw this:

I glanced out the window while changing lanes on the freeway this morning & noticed the bottom edge of this halo. By the time I had a chance to stop the car and really look, the lower arc seemed to have disappeared, but the left side was sharply visible – as was a sundog. I rolled down the window and snapped a couple of photos while waiting for the light to change. Unfortunately, I couldn’t position anything to block the sun, so the exposure isn’t all that great.

By the time I reached my destination and parked, it had all faded except for a slightly bright patch in the clouds to the left.