20 Most Incredible Light Phenomena [pics]
Tue, Jul 22, 2008
Light Displays
Aurora
Image courtesy of US Air Force Senior Airman Joshua Strang
The collision of electronically charged particles in the earth’s upper atmosphere often creates magnificent light displays over the polar regions. The colour depends on the elemental content of the particles – most auroras appear green or red due to oxygen, however nitrogen sometimes creates a deep blue or violet appearance. This particular display is the famous Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights, named after the Roman goddess of dawn, Aurora, and the ancient Greek for the northern wind, Boreas.
Contrails
Image by Jasmic_is_back_in_the_building
The vapour trails that follow aircraft through the sky cause stunning man-made patterns in the atmosphere. They are created by either aircraft exhaust or airflow over wingtip vortices as it emerges into cold temperatures at high altitudes and condenses into water and ice droplets. In this example a flurry of trails crisscrosses the sky creating an intricate pattern.
Rocket Exhaust Trails
Image by ilmungo
High altitude winds contort the trails of rockets and their small exhaust particles diffract sunlight into vivid iridescent colours, sometimes carried by the same winds thousands of kilometres before dissipating. The image shows the trails of the Minotaur rocket launched from the US Air Force Base at Vandenberg, California.
Sky Polarisation
Image by Philipp_Klinger
The sky, like many other things around us, scatters polarised light consisting of a certain electromagnetic orientation. Polarization is always perpendicular to the light path itself and if only a single polarization direction is present in the light, the light is said to be linearly polarized. This image was captured with a wide-angle polarised filter lens to show just how spectacular the electromagnetic charge of the skies are.
Star Trails
Image by Fort Photo
Not technically visible to the naked eye this breathtaking image was captured by leaving a camera with a shutter opening of over an hour at night. The natural rotation of the earth causes the stars in the sky to move across the horizon, creating these wonderful trails behind them. The only star in the night sky that appears stationary at all times is Polaris, the North Star, which hovers above the celestial North. The same would be true in the south but there is no star bright enough over it.
Zodiacal Light
Image by Alex Tudorica
A faint triangular glow seen in the night sky extending up towards the heavens, the Zodiacal light is easily masked by light pollution or moonlight. It is produced when sunlight reflects off dust particles in the cosmos, known as cosmic dust and consequently its spectrum is the same as the solar system. Solar radiation causes the dust particles to spiral slowly, creating a majestic constellation of delicately sprinkled lights in the sky.
Incredible Ice and Water Refractions
Piercing Rays and Solemn Shadows
5 Trackbacks For This Post
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20 Most Incredible Light Phenomena - Nerdcore Says:
July 23rd, 2008 at 7:27 pm[...] Link (via Neatorama) Tags: Light, Nature [...]
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¿Qué es un luna iris? | Maikelnai's blog Says:
July 24th, 2008 at 4:25 pm[...] verdad es que antes de ver las fantásticas fotografías publicadas por Enviromental Graffiti en este post, no tenía ni idea de que existiera este fenómeno, al que los anglosajones llaman Moonbow (arco de [...]
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ReducedMass.com - Science blog for the casually curious. » Science pictures to make you go WOW! Says:
July 25th, 2008 at 12:13 am[...] snapshots of light in a scene at a given moment, so why not start the list with a collection of the 20 Most Incredible Light Phenomena? This list really is incredible, and it’ll show you some of the most daunting visual [...]
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Light and Depression: Round Up | Dr Shock MD PhD Says:
July 27th, 2008 at 8:24 am[...] and dark. They can create beautiful effects or phenomena. This picture above is from a blog with 20 Most Incredible Light Phenomenas for your viewing pleasure. But light can also be used in [...]
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Los tres de unsimpleblog | Un simple blog Says:
July 28th, 2008 at 3:51 pm[...] Fotografías de los 20 fenómenos de luz más increibles de la naturaleza. [...]
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:17 am
Correction for the description of the photo for the Circumhorizontal Arc lists the photo location of Spokane, ID. There is no city of Spokane, ID, but there is a Spokane, WA.
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:37 am
Surreal. Looking at nature in a different light.
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:51 am
Spokane, Idaho? ReallY? It’s Washington. Idaho is like 45 minutes away from Spokane.
July 23rd, 2008 at 3:28 am
What about green flashes?
July 23rd, 2008 at 3:29 am
sorry, the link I put in there didn’t post… here it is again
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_flash
July 23rd, 2008 at 3:40 am
I liked the Aurora pic the best. Nice post - thanks.
July 23rd, 2008 at 3:41 am
all the pictures i have seen in all are overwhelmingly beatiful. i have never seen anything quite like them. i live in the south and we see rainbows, but thats about it. these are truly amazing.
July 23rd, 2008 at 3:50 am
Is there a Spokane in Idaho?
July 23rd, 2008 at 4:01 am
Wow that is amazing.very cool stuff!
JT
Ultimate Anonymity
July 23rd, 2008 at 4:43 am
I’d personally add a ‘green flash’ picture (http://www.kenrockwell.com/2005maui/images/DSC_6710_green_flash.jpg from google image search) and also a post sunset (deep twilight) sunbeams in the upper atmosphere. Lol, I’m not a meteorologist so no clue what the real name is but I guess it’d be a variation on Crepuscular Rays (aka Jesus Light to 3d rendering people).
Another that I don’t know the name of would be upper atmospheric Crepuscular Rays at sunset that appear to be converging opposite the sun due to perspective, which I saw several times growing up in Colorado.
Anyways, I’ve got a pic from Oahu of twilight beams that I can provide, no credit required, not trying to attention whore, just adding my two cents to a cool article. :)
July 23rd, 2008 at 4:49 am
wow nice images.
July 23rd, 2008 at 6:02 am
Amazing collection of photographs. Great descriptions to go with them also. Our world is a truly amazing place.
July 23rd, 2008 at 8:35 am
wow, extraordinary!
July 23rd, 2008 at 11:49 am
@ Stu - thanks very much we corrected it! Sorry, must be because we Graffiti Artists live in England :(
@ Zeus - message me, would love to see some more of your photos and perhaps turn them into another feature - my details are here: http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/about-us-the-blog-and-our-vision/whos-behind-this
@ Grey - we did want to include green flashes, but we couldn’t find any pics that were that spectacular :(
@everyone who enjoyed the post, thanks very much - Tom spent a lot of time on it
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Would be nice to have these pictures big enough where you can make them decent background images, what is the point if you cannot do this???
July 23rd, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Another Arc circumzénithal :
http://nanor44.free.fr/pano/pano42/02.html
Ronan.
July 24th, 2008 at 9:34 am
Amazing!
July 24th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Forgot to mention with the mirage, it blatently looks like water, seeing it in the desert wanting water n stuff
July 25th, 2008 at 6:14 am
Most of these photos are great…but I must do my civic duty:
I’m a visual effects expert in Hollywood and I have to point out that the photo on this page titled “Crepuscular Rays” with the rays coming through the hole in the natural rock bridge is TOTALLY faked.
First, you will (now) no doubt notice the insurmountable problem that the FRONT of those rocks is lit by the sun, which from the hard shadows on them tells us that the sun is not behind and to the right as the phony ray wants you to believe, it is in fact clearly IN FRONT of the rocks and roughly straight overhead because it’s lighting their front side yet some of the vertical surfaces are in shadow. Look at the hard black shadow under the left side of the arch: if that isn’t a sun shadow from the front then I’m Napoleon. So that beam is not from the sun, it is from Elvis in his Photoshop flying saucer.
The air between the camera and the ray’s terminus on the ground is also much too clear to have evidenced that much diffraction or diffusion in the beam area, that is, the air is way too clear to form that much of a beam. Look at how clear the air is all the way into the far distance (well uh, heh heh…see below) - there’s truly no way you could get that hot a ray under those conditions, even if the cloud shadows going the wrong way and the sun hitting the front of the rocks hadn’t already totally destroyed this picture’s credibility.
To top all that off, THE WHOLE SKY HAS BEEN REPLACED! Look carefully at those clouds: they’re at the wrong perspective! They appear to slope down too much toward the horizon which means that they were shot with a camera that was tilted up more than the camera that shot the rocks - look carefully and you’ll agree.
The casual unprofessional Photoshop trickster likely thought nobody would be able to tell that the perspective was off, but I am an expert and I can tell! The fact that the light is hitting the clouds from the wrong angle compared to the rocks provides another cue to their incorrect perspective. So the guy doesn’t even know that you have to do sky replacements with skies that match the perspective, lens angle and light direction of the landscape image.
Lastly, the patch of ground lit by the rays is the worst Photoshop attempt I have ever seen (ok ok, maybe I’ve seen worse). Where’s the darker area we should see where the obvious gap between the two beams falls? How does the gap between the two beams (where there should be NOTICEABLY LESS SUNLIGHT) end up lighting the ground in that area to the same level as where the hot beams fall?
The guy must have been getting tired by the time he botched that - the color of the patch on the ground is totally wrong (too yellow-green) and not from the same palette of color as the landscape - notice that the beams are NOT yellow-green, they are obviously white and should not change the color palette…all moot anyway because again, (I am laughing as I type) that patch of sun he put on the ground at the foot of the phony beam is in an area of the picture THAT IS ALREADY IN THE SUN as demonstrated above. Doh! What a goofball.
A totally ridiculous amateur Photoshop fake BUSTED!
Would be great for the cover of some religious publication though!
July 25th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
One really seldomn get to see such amazing natures glances but the pics make that show yes it really exists. If we closely to nature that without human interference it is really beautiful
July 27th, 2008 at 4:20 am
Totally Amazing!!!
September 23rd, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Wow, those are great pictures,
Something incredible happen to our town in Medan
A perfect rainbow ring around the sun appeared at noon on 22 Sep 2008, we believe also known as Sun Dogs
You might be interested to see the photos we took below:
http://www.medanku.com/rainbow-halo-sun/
Warmest Greetings from
MedanKu.com
November 27th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
A fantastic site, and brilliant effort. A great piece of work.,