Deformed Glory

Matěj Grék placed a strong halogen lamp somewhere around 20m away and take some photos from a fogbow. He noticed that the glory was deformed. The wind was strong in this night, the fog was moving quite fast, and with the fog of course also tiny water droplets. Maybe that’s why the glory is deformed in connection with divergent light. Images are taken with a polarization filter.

Camera: Nikon D60; F/6,3; f/30mm; t=30sec. at ISO 200

Author: Matěj Grék & Michael Großmann, Kämpfelbach, Germany

Tertiary Glass-Sphere Bow

I have discovered a spectral reflection phenomenon inside a transparent plexiglass-sphere. The phenomenon, of which I am almost sure it is NOT the equivalent of the Primary or Secondary Rainbow, is in fact the equivalent of the Tertiary Rainbow, visible as a bright illuminating spectral colored ring all along the limb of the sphere. To see this ring, one should look “from behind” the sphere, toward the sun, with the sun “in front” of it (appearing exactly “in the centre” of the sphere).

The photo show the sphere with appearance of the red component of the spectrum. The distance of the observing eye (or camera’s lens) to the sphere is VERY important, because the focal point of the ring is not a point, it’s a spectral colored line (red at the far end, blue at the near end).

As far as I know, no one has ever observed or photographed the ring-like appearance of, what I call, the Tertiary Glass-sphere Bow (which has a focal point or “line”, behind the globe!).

Author: Danny Caes, Ghent-Belgium

Icy window corona

At the beginning of this winter season at a cold morning – dark outside – with a thin layer of hoarfrost on the inner side of the bus windows I’ve noticed that the light of the street lamps’ light was not simply scattered on the windows, but having colorful corona around them. At that time I had no camera with me… All along the winter I was waiting for the same display each morning when some ice was on the bus windows, but for long weeks I haven’t met with such spectacular phenomena again.This day was my day on 24th January. Very thin layer of frost was on the inner part of the windows, (with some frost ferns too by the corner of the window frame), mainly this layer was made of small uniform ice crystals made of frozen vapor droplets, we might call it an ice film, it was about 0,1 mm thin.All the lamps outside had a corona, no matter how far the lamp was.The street lamps with white light had the most beautiful color range, the orange colored light of sodium vapor lamps had a less distinct colors and they were a bit moved towards the reds. Not only the street lamps’ corona was seen on the ice layer, but a much less spectacular corona around the reflection of the inner lamps of the bus too! At the part of the frost ferns pattern the corona became irregular in shape. When the lamp was near the window I could also see the bigger outer rings of the corona. Almost the same phenomena appears when simple water vapour is on the windows, but that one is really less poor in colors compared to the ice film corona.This was the first time when I could take photos of a corona produced by ice crystals. It’s a pity, I could not take close-up photo of the ice layer itself (the bus was driving me to work so it was permanently moving).

Photos are collected here: The only afterwork was some noise reduction and size reduction. It was totally dark outside, so the pics were taken with ISO200 – ISO400; aperture F4 – F5,6; exp. 1/15 – 1/25 sec. auto white balance; without tripod or any kind of help to avoid moving.I wonder if the same phenomena would appear if the outer side of the windows would have a layer of hoarfrost on it. It’s only weather’s turn to show it up!

Author: Monika Landy-Gyebnar, Veszprem, Hungary

Reverse Lamp-Rainbow

On August 31st at 01:00 I took some long-time exposures of the Westerhever Lighthouse in Nordfriesland (Germany). It was raining a bit but this didn”t matter because I wanted to display the rays of the lighthouse. Home again I reviewed the photos and was a bit surprised about a kind of arc, originating at a point in height of the lantern room and sloping downwards until it ends +/- horizontal (see pictures 1 2 3). I thought it could be a type of refraction phenomena but I couldn”t explain to me what is was exactly. So I placed the pictures in the Meteoros-forum. Mark Vornhusen and Christian Fenn told me, that this arc is a type of rainbow called “reverse lamp-rainbow” and that these photos are probably the first displaying this phenomena. Both a 42 degree arc as well as a 51 degree arc are to be seen at the pictures.

The rainbows originates from the horizontal Lighthouse-born lightplain cutting the hull of the “Minnaert-cigar”, an apple like shaped figure that describes all those points in which light coming from a source of light is reflectet in an angle of 42° respectively 51° to an Observer. In case of an usual source of light at every point of the Minneart-cigar a rainbow is being generated. But because of overlaying of these rainbows the colour-addition leads to a white light and no rainbow can be seen. However the thin light-layer of the lighthouse-beam only allows forming of rainbows at a small window of the minnaert-cigar and the rainbow becomes visible.

Author: Achim Christoph

Divergent light fogbow

Observed at Tuula (Estonia) on 10th September at 00:30. The fog condition was perfect at the time for the glory””s rings merge into multiple supernumeraries. But the location was perfect as well which is surrounded by forest from east and west side generating the wind tunnel to blow the fog from the bog field in north or from the river in south. As long as I remember this location has been always very foggy and has been often flooded in spring-time. The light source I used was Johnlite-2940, which makes the car””s headlights a joke.

I also observed a very bright and colourful glory and took some close-ups.

at 43mm.

Here still photos with 24mm and 30mm.

Author: Marko Krusel

Divergent Light Rainbow

On the evening of October 7 the weather was windy and rainy. I went out to take photos of rainbow using very powerfull light source. The shaft of light is narrow, but it illuminates buildings that are more than one kilometer away. The distance from the photographing spot to light source was about 150 meters. On October 10 I took photos of fogbow. It was amazingly bright and seemed to show up better closer to the light source.

[Posted by Marko Mikkilä]

Polarized fogbow in car headlights

I spent the past summer at Langmuir Laboratory on the Magdalena Mountains, in southwest-central New Mexico (USA) at an elevation of 3.2 km. The purpose of this was thunderstorm research. The monsoon here was unusually wet and on several days and nights the mountain laboratory was actually foggy. This is relatively rare considering the New Mexico climate. I took this opportunity to view polarized fogbows in my car”s headlights, and on September 2nd, I was particularly successful.

When I programmed a Mie simulation algorithm late last year and plotted a polarized fogbow on my screen, I was surprised that the polarized bow looked as it did, with the typical Brewster”s angle ”gap” in the main bow for parallel polarization. How excited I was to see that the actual fogbow indeed looked like the simulation! I had never seen it before in nature.

I am sure this has been done before by someone else, but I thought I would post the images anyway.

I covered up one of the car”s headlamps as to not have a double bow. I positioned myself about 50 meters in front of the truck, which I had parked on a slight inclination so the bow would be better visible against a featureless sky and be more complete. The fisheye lens was equipped with a polarizer at the place in the lens where the rays go parallel.

The simulation I made earlier, for a 10 micrometer radius droplet. It looks sharper because I assumed a point light source, assumed a monodisperse droplet distribution, and it was not divergent light. It is not a perfect match either considering the placement of the supernumeraries: probably the droplets in the actual display were a bit smaller. Because of the divergent light source, and because I don”t know the distance to the truck accurately, I doubt I will ever be able to accurately tell the actual droplet radii in the display.

The polarized glory was also obvious, but my shadow was blocking most of the part that was most polarized. I am including the unpolarized glory here.

The close-ups of the polarized and unpolarized fogbow were made with a 24mm/2.8 lens. The camera was a Canon 300d (modified version – i.e. with IR filter removed). I did not need to adjust the brightness and contrast much to get the results as displayed here. The fogbow had good contrast by itself.

About 10 days later I documented a natural fogbow in sunlight from the laboratory, through a polarizer. I photographed that with film; I have not processed those photos yet.

[Posted by Harald Edens]

Divergent double rainbow

On the night of Dec 12 2004 the weather was was quite murky and the rain was unusual because it was a misy where the drops were quite small but large enough to be felt. That night I turned on my car’s headlights and got this stunning set of divergent light rainbows. In the first photo you can see a single set of bows and the second shows three possibly 4 bows due to the camera being positioned between the two headlights.

[Posted by Michael Ellestad]

Divergent Light rainbows

Fogbows have a similar origin to rainbows. For this reason, Christian Fenn, who had previously photographed fogbows made by divergent light, decided to attempt to image a divergent light rainbow. On 19th April in Hammelburg, Bavaria he managed, in pouring rain, to image a rainbow formed by light from car headlamps.

A divergent light source can actually produce a multiplicity of rainbows, not only of angle 42° but at larger angles also. The net result is that the bows overlap and a discrete coloured arc is no longer visible. Another negative factor is that the rainbow cannot develop a high intensity like those sourced by the sun because only a narrow range of rays fall on the “rainbow cone” having its tip at the observers eye. To see a divergent light bow it is necessary to be far away from the light source so that its rays are as parallel as possible and develop a bow of sufficient contrast.

In the photograph the divergent light bow is wider horizontally than vertically. This is because the two car headlamps each form bows and so produce an apparent broadening.

Here is an article from Christian Fenn about this topic.