![]() ![]() These are caused by refraction of sunlight by ice crystals, a type of cirrus cloud. Sun dogs, official name “ parhelion,” are bright spots that appear on one or both sides of the sun at about 22 degrees. Less common is the larger 46-degree halo. The most common halo is a 22-degree halo, meaning it has a 22-degree radius with the sun or moon at its center. In fact, they’re produced by cirrostratus clouds, which often do precede especially winter precipitation, but not always. Historically, such haloes were thought to foretell a coming storm. Solar haloes are more pronounced than lunar ones because of the differences in the intensity of light. ![]() Haloes are produced when sunlight or moonlight is reflected or refracted by ice crystals high in the atmosphere. Sometimes, you can see a red fringe on the inside and, rarely, violet on the outside, and the sky is noticeably darker inside the ring than outside. Typically, it’s a white, luminous ring with the sun or moon at the center. Occasionally, you’ll see a halo around the sun or moon. This secondary bow is outside the primary bow (a radius of 50 degrees), is weaker, and has the order of the colors reversed. Occasionally, some rays of light go through this process a second time and produce a second rainbow. The bow itself has a radius of 42 degrees. For the angle of the sun’s rays to form a visible rainbow, the sun must be fairly low in the sky, 42 degrees above the horizon or less. “ Moonbows” also exist, but they’re much weaker, and the colors may be absent. Any spray of water droplets can produce a rainbow, including sprays from a garden hose or a sprinkler. ![]() Rainbows appear on the opposite side of the sky from the sun. The raindrops act as little prisms that reflect and refract (bend) the white sunlight into its component colors and project it onto the water. It’s produced when sunlight passes through water droplets, such as rain or fog. A rainbow is a luminous arc across the sky featuring, well, all the colors of a rainbow, from violet on the inside to red on the outside. The best-known and most spectacular of photometeors is the rainbow. These are visual phenomena produced when the light from the sun or moon interacts with something in the Earth’s atmosphere, often some form of water. What Are Photometeors?īesides clouds, you can see many things in the sky above, and their scientific name is “ photometeors“: “photo” for “light,” and a “meteor,” in this case, is technically anything in the sky. ![]() It also means more remote locations, such as deserts and oceans, have more vivid sky colors. This makes the sky grayish or whitish and diminishes the blue during the day and the red at sunrise and sunset. Natural haze and pollution aerosols come in all sizes and scatter the components of sunlight. Stratospheric volcanic dust particles after a major eruption can also cause colorful sunrises and sunsets for many months. Some of the most striking cloud coloration occurs when a deck of clouds almost covers the whole sky but leaves a narrow clear strip near the horizon. They reflect the reddish colors and thus often appear red themselves. Therefore, sunrises and sunsets are famously red in color.Ĭlouds often add to the visual effect of colorful sunrises and sunsets. More of the blue light is scattered before it reaches your location, so the reddish part of the spectrum becomes more dominant. At sunrise and sunset, the sun’s rays travel through more of the atmosphere. Blueness of the sky is maximized during the middle of the day. Because blue light wavelengths are shorter and smaller, blue light is scattered more, and so this is what we see. When sunlight hits the atmosphere, air molecules can scatter the light separately by wavelength, or color. Air molecules are smaller than the wavelengths of the various colors of the spectrum. Although sunlight appears white, it’s actually a combination of colors along the spectrum from violets and blues to oranges and reds. The daytime sky appears blue - a brilliant darkish-blue on clear days and a milky whitish-blue on others. To appreciate those sights, we can start with the sky itself. But the atmosphere can also offer views of some of the most spectacular sights in nature. Weather systems, disturbances in the atmosphere above us, can be dangerous. Why does the sky change colors? Learn why strange weather phenomena occurs and follow the weather phenomena list. ![]()
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