blessmycottonsocks
Antediluvian
- Joined
- Dec 22, 2014
- Messages
- 9,440
- Location
- Wessex and Mercia
Flying home on Friday afternoon, I had a window seat and noticed what looked like a very striking circular rainbow appearing on the clouds.
Had to get a photo of this I thought, so I rummaged through my rucksack for my mobile and turned it on. Sadly, the effect was fading rapidly and the couple of photos I took are just a pale shadow of what I originally saw:
Curious as to what could cause such an effect, I've just Googled it and see that it's known as "Pilot's Glory".
The science behind it is that "passengers on the side of the plane directly opposite the Sun can sometimes see the plane’s shadow on the clouds below. This position is also where glories can be observed as the cloud’s water droplets scatter sunlight back toward a source of light."
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/earthmatters/2018/07/09/glory-of-the-pilot/
At its most dramatic, it can look rather like this:
Had to get a photo of this I thought, so I rummaged through my rucksack for my mobile and turned it on. Sadly, the effect was fading rapidly and the couple of photos I took are just a pale shadow of what I originally saw:
Curious as to what could cause such an effect, I've just Googled it and see that it's known as "Pilot's Glory".
The science behind it is that "passengers on the side of the plane directly opposite the Sun can sometimes see the plane’s shadow on the clouds below. This position is also where glories can be observed as the cloud’s water droplets scatter sunlight back toward a source of light."
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/earthmatters/2018/07/09/glory-of-the-pilot/
At its most dramatic, it can look rather like this: