It has felt as if I've waited forever to have sunsets again so I am taking advantage of them. I've never before gotten a photograph with the red ring around the sun. I wonder why that happened.
I'm really happy my foggy cedar forest photo made it to the TT this week. Thanks ever so much and thanks for your visits, comments, suggestions, favs. We had no internet last night so I am behind again in my commenting. I'll try to catch up
Thanks to. Marnie @golftragic I just Learned:
”The ice crystals which make up certain high clouds can act as perfect microscopic mirrors. It is worth bearing this in mind when traveling above the clouds. Plate-shaped crystals can reflect sunlight upwards, and in doing so produce unusual optical phenomena that would not be visible from the ground. On a flight over Indiana, US, Patrick Dennis (Member 43,666) spotted two such effects from his window seat. On the right floats a sub-sun, a mirror image of the Sun that appears below the real thing. To the left is a fainter effect known as a sub-parhelion. This is a below-the-horizon version of the familiar parhelion, or sun-dog, often seen off to the side, and level with, a low Sun. The sub-parhelion is instead level with the sub-sun, and it is considerably rarer. This image also shows a 22-degree halo circling the Sun: yet another optical effect produced by ice crystals glittering in the rarefied air.”
The red ring is not easily seen here, the human eye is so much better at seeing things like that isn't it? But I guess the ring is due to refraction from atmospheric moisture of some kind.
It's almost like a tiny faux rainbow which is then being reflected by the water. Would it have been cold enough to give ice particles as mentioned in Marnie's article?
