I don't know much about clouds, but there were some wild ones overhead around noontime today (7 June 2021). We could see a distinct band of clouds passing by with long wispy strands extending to the south.
Eric looked up and said something about a rainbow, and I was confused at first, but then focused on where he was looking and saw subtle colors in the clouds:
It was hard for me to capture this, but here are a few examples to document it. These were very high, thin clouds, less than 45° from the sun. The colors did not appear to be in "rainbow order," and instead appeared more random. As the distance between the clouds and the sun grew, the colors faded.
Whoa!
These photos are fabulous! A similar phenomenon is a sun dog. They are caused by refraction of sunlight through ice crystals, like a prism. That opens quite a google-search-hole! I hope a more knowledgeable reader chimes in.
ReplyDeleteMy brother, an artist, has a blog about painting. There's a tab about atmospheric effects and included there is this post:
ReplyDeletehttp://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2015/04/circumzenithal-arc.html
which may "shed some light" on the colors you saw in the clouds.
Dan