Pileus Iridescent Cloud


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Pictured, behind this darker cloud, is a pileus iridescent cloud, a group of water droplets that have a uniformly similar size and so together diffract different colors of sunlight by different amounts. The above image was taken just after the picturesque sight was noticed by chance by a photographer in Ethiopia. A more detailed picture of the same cloud shows not only many colors, but unusual dark and wavy bands whose origins are thought related to wave disturbances in the cloud.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110824.html

iridescent_havens_900.jpg

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I've not seen anything like that before but earlier this year I did see an "upside down rainbow" in the clouds caused by the sun shining through tiny ice crystals creating a circumzenithal arc, it only happens when the sun is 32 degrees or less from the horizon - a rare sight outside of the arctic/antarctic circles. I don't have the photographs anymore but it was exactly the same as this picture.

article-1205829-0606C017000005DC-77_634x462.jpg

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