Meteorology: The Science of the AtmosphereTalman, Charles Fitzhugh
Science
Meteorology: The Science of the Atmosphere
Talman, Charles Fitzhugh
Meteorology
In its commonest form the corona consists of a brownish-red ring,
which, together with the bluish-white inner field between the ring
and the luminary, forms the so-called _aureole_. If other colors are
distinguishable, they follow the brownish red of the aureole (in the
direction away from the luminary) in the order from violet to red; the
reverse of the order seen in halos. Sometimes the sequence of colors is
repeated three or four times.
Patches and fringes of iridescence are sometimes seen in the clouds at
a greater distance from the luminary than that of the ordinary corona.
Probably they are fragments of coronas of unusual size produced by
exceedingly fine cloud particles.
Similar in appearance to the corona is the _glory_; a series of
concentric colored rings seen around the shadow of the observer, or
of his head only, cast upon a cloud or fog bank. Such a shadow, with
or without the glory, constitutes the _specter of the Brocken_, often
seen from mountain tops and from aircraft. The colored circles are
sometimes called _Ulloa’s rings_, from the name of a Spanish _savant_
who observed the phenomenon among the mountains of South America in the
eighteenth century and has left us a vivid description of it.
The Brocken specter, though it owes its name to legends associated
with the famous German mountain where witches were once believed to
assemble on Walpurgis Night, is actually less frequently witnessed
there than in many other parts of the world. Whenever the sun is low
on one side of a mountain and a wall of mist arises from a near-by
valley on the other, the mountaineer is likely to see his shadow upon
the mist. If the latter consists of fine droplets of approximately
uniform size, the colored rings will probably appear, and occasionally
there is also a white fogbow outside of the glory. As all shadows cast
by the sun taper rapidly (on account of the angular breadth of the
solar disk), a well-defined Brocken specter can never be more than a
few yards away from the observer. Its distance is, however, commonly
overestimated--some observers have supposed it to be miles away!--and
hence the erroneous idea prevails that the specters are of enormous
size.
Rarely from a favorable point of vantage on a mountain, and very
frequently from aircraft, the specter, instead of being seen on a
vertical wall of mist when the sun is low, appears on a horizontal
sheet of cloud below the observer when the sun is high. The aeronaut
may thus observe the complete outline of his balloon or aeroplane,
encircled with the rainbow tints of the glory. During the World War the
appearance of the luminous rings was likened to the emblem painted on
the wings of the Allied aeroplanes and was regarded by superstitious
aviators as an omen favorable to their cause.
The glory is due to the light that is reflected back to the observer
after penetrating the cloud or fog a little way and is diffracted by
the superficial layer of drops in emerging.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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