'Glory ' observed on-board (October 2003)
'Glory ' observed on-board (October 2003)
| The following photo, taken in the morning of 13 Sep 2003 during a flight from Kunming to Lijiang, China, shows the shadow of an airplane on a cloud layer. The shadow was surrounded by alternating reddish and bluish rings. This is an optical phenomenon known as 'glory' and results from sunlight being reflected ('diffracted' in the physicist's term) back by water droplets in a cloud. It may also be seen from an elevated position on the ground, for example on a hill, when the sun casts the shadow of an observer onto an underlying layer of low cloud, mist or fog. |
