Starship Asterisk*

Hey Phil Plait mentioned this APOD -- and his cool image featured in it -- in his blog on Slate: [url]http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/10/29/apod_iridescent_clouds_photo.html[/url]

- RJN

[quote="Nitpicker"]Nice image Chris. And is that a tinge of green I sense in your comment? :mrgreen:[/quote]
I'd rather have the real prize than the consolation prize. And I do see iridescent clouds a few times a year. Still, I'm glad that Phil was able to turn lemons into lemonade.

I got eclipse viewing filters for all the kids at the school, and we invited the community, too. About 100 kids and adults viewing the Sun, followed by a spaghetti dinner and then I opened the school's observatory for some nighttime viewing. An all round astronomically successful day in the mountains.

[quote="Chris Peterson"]Bummer. I'm in Colorado and all I saw was a solar eclipse under cloudless skies...

[i]E7_25227p.jpg[/i][/quote]

Nice image Chris. And is that a tinge of green I sense in your comment? :mrgreen:

Bummer. I'm in Colorado and all I saw was a solar eclipse under cloudless skies...

[attachment=0]E7_25227p.jpg[/attachment]

[quote="Cousin Ricky"]Oh noes! HAARP is now turning the clouds colors! :wink:[/quote]
Haha, don't even joke about this. We'll be knee deep in nuts soon.

Oh noes! HAARP is now turning the clouds colors! :wink:

What an eerie sight that is....and quite awesome.

:---[===] *

[url=http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap141029.html][img]http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/calendar/S_141029.jpg[/img] [size=150]Iridescent Cloud Edge Over Colorado[/size][/url]

[b] Explanation: [/b] Sometimes your eclipse viewing goes bad in an interesting way. While watching and photographing [url=http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=34008]last Thursday[/url]'s [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_October_23,_2014]partial solar eclipse[/url], a [url=http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap030923.html]popular astronomy blogger[/url] suffered through long periods of [url=http://www.nasa.gov/flash/57067main_clouds.swf]clouds[/url] blocking the Sun. Unexpectedly, however, a nearby cloud began to show a rare effect: [url=http://www.atoptics.co.uk/droplets/irid1.htm]iridescence[/url]. Frequently part of a more familiar solar [url=http://www.atoptics.co.uk/droplets/corona.htm]corona[/url] effect, [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_iridescence]iridescence[/url] is the diffraction of sunlight around a thin screen of [url=http://www.atoptics.co.uk/droplets/cordrsz.htm]nearly uniformly-sized[/url] water droplets. [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqgdJsJ_Rdw]Different colors[/url] of the sunlight become deflected by slightly [url=http://www.atoptics.co.uk/droplets/cormoon.htm]different angles[/url] and so come to the observer from slightly different directions. This display, [url=http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/10/26/iridescent_clouds_eclipse_photo_led_something_even_better.html]featured here[/url], was quite bright and exhibited an unusually broad range of colors. On the right, the [url=http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap041013.html]contrails[/url] of an airplane are also visible.

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