As reported by Spaceweather.com:
For the third day in a row, Arctic sky watchers are reporting a widespread outbreak of polar stratospheric clouds. "The colors are spectacular," says Ramune Sapailaite, who photographed the display over Gran, Norway..."The clouds were visible in the sky all day, but the colors really exploded just before sunset," says Sapailaite. "I took these pictures using my cellphone."Widely considered to be the most beautiful clouds on Earth, polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) are rare. Earth's stratosphere is very dry and, normally, it has no clouds at all. PSCs form when the temperature in the Arctic stratosphere drops to a staggeringly-low -85 C. Then, and only then, can widely-spaced water molecules begin to coalesce into tiny ice crystals. High-altitude sunlight shining through the crystals creates intense iridescent colors that rival auroras.
Related: Fire rainbow and circumhorizotal arc. There's probably additional information somewhere at Atmospheric Optics.
Whoa!
ReplyDeleteI have a few colorful clouds photos on my blog Skeetmotis https://skeetmotis.blogspot.com/search?q=clouds
DeleteThey are more common than you think, if you look for them.
One of the great losses of our time (I'm not even joking) is that Les Cowley has decided to take down his original Atmospheric Optics site. It used to be still accessible for a while by adding "old." in front of the URL (old.atoptics.co.uk), but alas, it seems to be gone for good now. The current version is an atrocious AI-generated piece of word salad. Some alternatives exist (see my list at the end of my blog post here), but none of them are as good as the absolute treasure trove that was Atmospheric Optics.
ReplyDeleteInstant update re. my previous comment: I just learned that the old Atmospheric Optics is still available after all! The new URL is https://www.atoptics.org.uk/. This is terrific news indeed. Forget everyhing I said!
ReplyDelete