Rare colorful clouds

Yesterday, one hour before sunset, I did see some colorful clouds in the opposite direction of the Sun (At the Anti solar point). I never seen colored clouds there before so I had a hard time figuring out if they were polar stratospheric clouds or iridescent clouds. The colored clouds slowly faded away as the sun set so I thought it might be iridescent clouds, but I never seen them opposite of the Sun before.

When I returned home I contacted Les Cowley at OPOD (http://www.atoptics.co.uk) to get his opinion of these clouds and he guessed that it's tropospheric iridescent clouds. He's never seen them opposite the sun before so this is probably very rare.

Always exciting to see a new phenomena, perfect ending for 2017.

Happy new year everyone!

Reflected rainbow at sunset

Rainbows are always opposite the Sun and their centres are below the horizon at the the so called antisolar point. Early morning and late afternoon it the best time to see a rainbow because the sun must not be too high. The lower the sun the higher is the rainbow.

In this photo I took in Vansbro, Sweden, taken just before sunset, the rainbow is as high as it gets and with the reflection in the water, acting as the lower half of a circle, it's easy to see that the rainbow was at its highest position. Had the Sun been any higher in the sky, this circle had been more ellipse shaped.

Rainbows are rarer than might be thought, halos are much more common.

Panorama made with a Nikon D800E with a Nikon AF-S 14-24mm f/2.8 lens

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Missing: Nearby star

For almost three weeks now, our closest star, the Sun, is missing. At this time of the year in Östersund, it's usually visible between 08:00 and 17:00. Last know position in the sky was  on October 2nd, low in the west. Hopefully the weather will clear up soon so I can get a good look at the huge sunspot AR2192.

Low and High Rainbow

Here I have combined two shots from yesterday of two different rainbows. It's interesting to see how the Suns altitude in the sky affects the height of the rainbow.

The first photo was taken at 15:25 UTC (Add two hours for Swedish summer time) when the Sun had an altitude of 27° above the horizon. In the second shot, taken at 19:48 UTC, the Sun was just 0.033° (2 arc minutes) above the horizon. At sunrise or sunset a rainbow's centre is on the horizon as seen in the second image.