Photos-Kind of like a sundog, but what is it???

[Scott Patterson]

http://www.summitpost.org/album/299202/sundog-or.html

I created this album to see what this is. I assume that like a sundog, it is formed by ice crystals, but unlike a sundog this one is nearly horizontal and stretches halfway across the sky. These photos are for acedemic purposes and for discussion and are only temporary. What is it called?

All were shot along the Yampa River in Duffy Canyon Colorado on May 27 around noon.

Has anyone ever seen anything like it? Click on the album link above to see how long this thing was. Here is a photo of part of it:

[JonathanBelles]

To the uneducated eye, I think it looks like a rainbow, but I am probably wrong.

[Scott Patterson]

Yes, it looks like a rainbow (but much longer), but is horizontal with "waves" in it, and doesn't arc. "Wavy horizontal rainbow stetching halfway across the sky" would be good name for it.






Zoomed in:

[artist]

whatever it is it is gorgeous!

[Bunkertor]

Is there a link to a blast of sun-flares ? Maybe, athmosphere was somehow squeezed, so that electro-magnetic waves don´t get the right way to the poles any more....

*offtopic* Is using the word called F*** now allowed ?

[JonathanBelles]

Its very goregeous. Post more pics.

[x-y-no]

That's a higher-order rainbow (third order if I'm remembering right - circling the sun with the red side closest to the sun.)

I'd guess the wavyness is due to variations in refractive index due to strong humidity gradients.

[BreinLa]

Is there a link to a blast of sun-flares ? Maybe, athmosphere was somehow squeezed, so that electro-magnetic waves don´t get the right way to the poles any more....

*offtopic* Is using the word called F*** now allowed ?

Bunkertor, exactly why did you ask the above *offtopic* question?

[Scott Patterson]

That's a higher-order rainbow (third order if I'm remembering right - circling the sun with the red side closest to the sun.)

Hmmmm, don't higher order rainbows still need rain falling to form to form? This one is far above the elevation of any rain clouds and even above most of the cirrus (or on the cirrus?). It was above the clouds rather than under them.

Any moisture would be ice crystals almost for sure???

Just curious.

[Scott Patterson]

Think we found it. It is probably the below:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... -fire.html



June 19, 2006—It looks like a rainbow that's been set on fire, but this phenomenon is as cold as ice.

Known in the weather world as a circumhorizontal arc, this rare sight was caught on film on June 3 as it hung over northern Idaho near the Washington State border (map of Idaho).

The arc isn't a rainbow in the traditional sense—it is caused by light passing through wispy, high-altitude cirrus clouds. The sight occurs only when the sun is very high in the sky (more than 58° above the horizon). What's more, the hexagonal ice crystals that make up cirrus clouds must be shaped like thick plates with their faces parallel to the ground.

When light enters through a vertical side face of such an ice crystal and leaves from the bottom face, it refracts, or bends, in the same way that light passes through a prism. If a cirrus's crystals are aligned just right, the whole cloud lights up in a spectrum of colors.

This particular arc spanned several hundred square miles of sky and lasted for about an hour, according to the London Daily Mail.

This one below may be even weirder. It is a circumzenithal arc. Check out the color order.



No, this isn't an upside-down rainbow, and the photographer hasn't faked the picture. It's an unusual phenomenon caused by sunlight shining through a thin, invisible screen of tiny ice crystals high in the sky and has nothing at all to do with the rain.

Andrew G. Saffas, a Concord artist and photographer, saw the colorful arc at 3:51 p.m. on a beautiful day recently when a slight rain had fallen in the morning. He thought it was a rainbow, created by raindrops refracting sunlight the way glass prisms refract any bright beam of light.

Instead, what Saffas saw was what scientists call a circumzenithal arc, according to physicist Joe Jordan, a former NASA space scientist at the Ames Research Center in Mountain View, who is now director of the Sky Power Institute in Santa Cruz, which promotes solar power and other alternative fuels.

The flat, six-sided ice crystals that cause the arcs are no larger than salt grains and usually form in the cold haze of wispy cirrus clouds about 5 miles up, said Jordan, who viewed the image shot by Saffas. In the far north, zenithal arcs are more common than rainbows, but here in the Bay Area's more moderate climate they are rare, even in winter.

When the sun is low in the afternoon sky on a hazy day -- even though the sky appears bright blue -- sunlight can hit the flat face of the ice particles at a slant. Then the rays bend within each crystal and emerge with the colors appearing separated into all the rainbow colors of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.

But, said Jordan, the colors in those arcs appear in the opposite position from the colors in rainbows: In zenithal arcs, as in Saffas' image, the red hues are on the bottom and the blue and violet are on the top. The arcs appear to terminate where the millions of ice crystals end, he said.

"The arcs are like a Cheshire cat grin," Jordan said, "and they vanish just the same way."

But the one Saffas saw Jan. 13 lasted at least an hour, he said -- plenty of time for him grab his Nikon D70 camera and shoot away.

"We were having a huge family party, and everyone had stepped out on our deck," Saffas said, "when I saw this strange arc right overhead in the sky. It was a beautiful day, the sun was sinking behind the two tall redwoods in our yard, and the colors in what I thought was a rainbow upside down were absolutely brilliant."

Alexandre Andronikos of Portland, who was at the party, vividly recalled "the fantastic sight."

"Oh, my God, look up at the sky!" she remembers calling to everyone. "I never saw anything like it in my life, and we all ran into the house to grab our cameras. Mine is a Sony digital, and I got some wonderful pictures, too."

Saffas, who is 85 and a retired bank loan officer, has always been devoted to his painting and sculpture. More than 50 years ago, he said, he was hired to paint murals during the renovation of the fabled Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, now the home of the American Cinematheque. He still paints and sculpts, he said, but he's also an avid photographer.

Les Cowley, a retired physicist in England, maintains a Web site on atmospheric optics filled with incredible images and explanations of displays in the sky that most of us have never seen: supernumerary arcs, halos, sundogs, fogbows, glories, holy lights, green flashes and more. The Web site is http://www.atoptics.co.uk/

[Aslkahuna]

Initially I was going to guess tangential arc but the arc is facing the wrong way so it's probably definitely a circumhorizontal arc.. Halo phenomena can be quite complex.

Steve

[JonathanBelles]

Those pics are amazing! Ive seen one of those upside down rainbows.

[Pebbles]

That's absolutely stunning! Nice catch with the camera and thanks for sharing.. Didn't even know these existed! Always something new to learn about...

[CajunMama]

How lucky you were to be able to view this!