Glowing Spider

On Sep. 29. 2007 at a late afternoon cakewalk I observed this glowing spider above a steep sunside slope between low hazelnut trees. I couldn”t get closer than abt. 3 meters to the object, so the size of the image became limited. The canon tele EF70/300 did i relatively good job on taken the image freehand . The spiderweb also showed nice colourful reflections of light from the sun.

Author: Rolf Kohl

Spider Web colours

Thie picture of light reflected from spider webs, looking on a direction towards the Sun, with 2-stop underexposure and the camera out of focus. Note the fact that, although the web strand is out of focus in the direction at right angles to the strand, the colour bands are sharp in a direction along the strand.

Author: Alan Clark

Spider web reflections

In Germany October 2005 was very dry, calm and warm with no frosts. The weather gave rise to a large number of spiders and of course their webs. Towards the end of the month, Reinhard Nitze’s attention was drawn to an unusual light phenomenon on a ploughed field. The sun produced a silvery reflection like the glitter path seen on waves when the sun is low. He had seen the effect earlier on scythed grain and grass fields but never so conspicuous. The effects were produced by sunlight reflecting off threads of spider silk that happened to be perpendicular to the sun – eye line in the numerous webs in the fields (more images 1,2,3).

The effect is seen also in the lower left image where the web reflections in trees make concentric rings.

Bare and wet twigs produce similar effects as do support wires in vineyards. Perhaps observers have seen other reflection effects like these?

[Text: Reinhard Nitze]