Upside down rainbows and other unusual sights

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Maria
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Re: Upside down rainbows and other unusual sights

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Here is a fascinating photo from the lands called the Czech Republic

On April 2nd, high above a thunderstorm in the Czech republic, an enormous ring of light appeared in the night sky. Using a low-light video camera, amateur astronomer Martin Popek of Nýdek photographed the 300 km-wide donut hovering near the edge of space:

elve_over Czech_04-02-2017_spaceweather.jpg
elve_over Czech_04-02-2017_spaceweather.jpg (34.7 KiB) Viewed 7268 times

This is an example of an ELVE (Emissions of Light and Very Low Frequency Perturbations due to Electromagnetic Pulse Sources). First seen by cameras on the space shuttle in 1990, ELVEs appear when a pulse of electromagnetic radiation from cloud-to-ground lightning propagates up toward space and hits the base of Earth's ionosphere. A faint ring of deep-red light marks the broad 'spot' where the EMP hits.

see: http://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php ... &year=2017 for the entire article on ELVES.

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Maria
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Re: Upside down rainbows and other unusual sights

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Here is a double rainbow. Surprise! Almost all rainbows are double if one takes the time to look.

Image

DOUBLE RAINBOW: Whenever you see one rainbow, look for another, because rainbows always come in pairs. Consider this example, photographed by Kamila Mazurkiewicz Osiak of Trzcianki, Poland, on April 13th.

"This huge double rainbow appeared after an intense rainstorm passed through our area," says Osiak. "It was raining so hard, it looked like the clouds were walking on the ground."

The bright inner rainbow is the primary bow, caused by sunbeams reflecting once inside falling raindrops. It's the bow you usually see. The less-bright outer rainbow is the secondary bow, caused by sunbeams reflecting twice inside raindrops. Secondary bows often go unnoticed, because they are usually very faint, but they are always there.

http://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php ... &year=2017

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Re: Upside down rainbows and other unusual sights

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Here is a very unusual twinned rainbow:

'TWINNED RAINBOW' SPLITS DOWN THE MIDDLE: "On 17th June, we had some very unsettled weather in Bucharest, Romania, with rain showers in the morning and a big storm in the afternoon," reports local resident Corlaci Nicolae-Adrian. "After the storm passed, a beautiful rainbow appeared, but it was strange..." The rainbow was split down the middle:

Image

"At first I thought I was seeing supernumerary arcs," says Nicolae-Adrian, "but I soon realized that I had seen something more rare and less understood: a twinned rainbow."

Atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley, who invented the term 'twinned rainbow' about ten years ago, explains: "Sometimes, especially in stormy weather, a rainbow will split into two. It's rare and may last for only a few seconds. We think, but are not sure, that raindrops of different sizes make the twins. The upper bow is from nearly spherical smaller drops. Larger drops, more flattened by air resistance as they fall, make the lower bow. The two kinds of drops might be in separate rainsheets. Support for the 'two drop' proposal is that theory predicts that the outer secondary bow would not split – as in Nicolae-Adrian's picture."

To see the rest of this article, kindly visit: http://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php ... &year=2017

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Re: Upside down rainbows and other unusual sights

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Here is a glorious autumnal aurora.

Image

THE LAST DAY OF SUMMER IN NORWAY: The onset of autumn around the Arctic Circle brings an end to relentless summer sunlight--and a new beginning for Northern Lights. Frank Olsen of Andøya island, Norway, witnessed both on Sept. 21st

http://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php ... &year=2017

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Re: Upside down rainbows and other unusual sights

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Steve returns:

From www.spaceweather.com

STEVE, THE MYSTERIOUS AURORAL ARC: A strong geomagnetic storm was brewing in the skies above Alberta, Canada, on Sept. 27th when photographer Alan Dyer looked up and saw a ribbon of purple light arcing cross the sky. It was the mysterious aurora known as "Steve":

Image
"The Steve arc appeared for only about 20 minutes, starting at 10:45 pm MDT, during a lull in the main display," says Dyer, who captured the arc in a 6-shot, 360o panorama.

For many years, northern sky watchers have reported this luminous form occasionally dancing among regular auroras. It was widely called a "proton arc" until researchers pointed out that protons probably had nothing to do with it. So members of the Alberta Aurora Chasers group gave it a new name: "Steve."

"We seem to be ideally located in the Canadian Prairies for sighting Steve, as we often get the main aurora to our north, placing Steve overhead or to our south," notes Dyer.
Image

No one fully understands the underlying physics of the purple ribbon. One of the European Space Agency's Swarm satellites flew straight through Steve during a previous apparition. Data revealed a relatively hot river of gas, about 25 km wide, flowing rapidly through Earth's outer atmosphere. "Steve seems to be a thermal emission from hot flowing gas rather than from precipitating electrons," says Dyer, "but his origin and nature are still mysterious."

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Re: Upside down rainbows and other unusual sights

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http://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_up ... _id=139529

What looks like a tidal wave ... a huge one ... turns out to be merely a mirage at the beach.

Image

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Re: Upside down rainbows and other unusual sights

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From: www.spaceweather.com

STRANGE RAINBOW: Jon Larsen was driving home east of Spearfish, South Dakota, last Friday morning when he saw a rainbow. "There was something wrong with it," he says. "I grabbed my camera and zoomed in for a closer look." This is what he saw:

Image

"The rainbow's primary red band had separated from the rest!" says Larsen.

What happened? Atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley says there are at least two ways that rainbows can be distorted in this way:

First, by hot air: "This rainbow over Adelaide, Australia, was bent by columns of rising hot city air, but no cities appear to be near Jon Larsen's rainbow," says Cowley.

Second, by mixed-up raindrops: "Rainbows can appear distorted when there are differences in the size of the raindrops along lines of sight to different parts of the bow. Small drops give broader bows."

The second explanation is probably correct. Larsen notes that "strong surface winds were blowing rain shafts around." These strong winds may have segregated raindrops into layers of different size--small drops being blown about more easily than large ones--giving the 'bow a strange appearance, indeed.

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