The Glory effect

In a previous post I had asked what caused a rainbow halo effect seen around the shadow of an airplane passing over clouds.

In contrast to the rest of us commenters (ahem!), True Blue came up with the answer.  It's called a Glory, and Wikipedia describes it like this:

A glory is an optical phenomenon that resembles an iconic saint's halo about the shadow of the observer's head. It consists of one or more concentric, successively dimmer rings, each of which is red on the outside and bluish towards the centre. The effect is believed to happen due to classical wave tunneling, when light nearby the droplet tunnels through air inside the droplet and, in the case of a glory, is emitted backwards due to resonance effects.

There is also something called a Brocken Spectre, where your shadow is projected by sunlight from behind you, onto cloud or mist below, magnifying it into a giant figure, and surrounded by a Glory.

Thanks, True Blue, you've left us all a little bit better informed than we were before!

A Brocken Spectre

More Glories