Going home... in "glory" by atchoo

Going home... in "glory"

On my flight back to Aalborg today I got the opportunity to take a photo of an amazing optical phenomenon called "glory".

Here's a description from Wikipedia:
"A glory is an optical phenomenon that resembles an iconic saint's halo about the shadow of the observer's head, caused by light of the Sun or (more rarely) the Moon interacting with the tiny water droplets that make up mist or clouds. The glory consists of one or more concentric, successively dimmer rings, each of which is red on the outside and bluish towards the centre. Due to its appearance, the phenomenon is sometimes mistaken for a circular rainbow, but the latter has a much larger diameter and is caused by different physical processes.

Glories arise due to wave interference of light internally refracted within small droplets and depending on circumstances (such as the uniformity of droplet size in the clouds), one or more of the glory's rings can be visible. The angular size of the inner and brightest ring is much smaller than that of a rainbow, about 5° to 20°, depending on the size of the droplets. In the right conditions, a glory and a rainbow can occur simultaneously.

Like a rainbow, a glory is centered on the antisolar (or, in case of the Moon, antilunar) point, which coincides with the shadow of the observer's head. Since this point is by definition diametrically opposed to the Sun's (or Moon's) position in the sky, it always lies below the observer's horizon when the Sun (Moon) is up. In order to see a glory, therefore, the clouds or fog causing it must be located below the observer, in a straight line with the Sun/Moon and the observer's eye. Hence, the glory is commonly observed from a high viewpoint such as a mountain, tall building or from an aircraft. In the latter case, if the plane is flying sufficiently low for its shadow to be visible on the clouds, the glory always surrounds it. This is sometimes called The Glory of the Pilot."

Gear used: Olympus OM-D E-M5 + Olympus M.Zuiko f3.5-6.3/12-50mm.
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