Re: Reverse Rainbow -- the answer Now slightly Off Topic

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Slightly Off Topic but still talking about light.

I'm still trying to find out -- without looking it up, yet -- why the pattern is an arc.  Random diffraction would just produce white light.  There must be something constant, relative to me, along each color.

  -yoram



On May 6, 2012, at 8:20 AM, Andrew Davidhazy wrote:

Amazing!  

Andy

On May 5, 2012, at 11:09 PM, YGelmanPhoto wrote:

It looks like we were all wrong.  I got an answer from Raymond Lee, Research Professor at the U. S. Naval Academy.  His comment:
- - - - -
. . .Your photograph shows a rather nice circumzenithal arc (abbreviated CZA), an often spectacular 
ice-crystal halo.  Because all halos are caused by ice crystals rather than by raindrops, the 
CZA should not be called a rainbow, although that is most observers' reasonable first guess.

 For some photographs and an optical explanation of the CZA, I highly recommend my 
colleague Les Cowley's Atmospheric Optics website at  
http://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/cza.htm    Note that the moon is far too weak a light source 
to contribute to a visible CZA when the sun is above the horizon.
- - - - - - 
Following his lead, I looked at Wikipedia which has a photo that is more intense than mine:

Nice to learn something new when it's real cool . . .
  -yoram





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