Monday, May 22, 2006

Fogbow with supernumeraries and Glory

This fogbow and glory was photographed by Ken Tape on May 12, 2006 while descending to a place called "Isachsen" located at 79 degrees North in the Canadian archipelago. The display and descent lasted for about 10 minutes, and the strength of the bows was fairly constant throughout. The intensity of the fogbow supernumeraries was strengthened by the use of a polarization filter. Note that the color sequence in the supernumeraries – blue outside – is reversed compared to that in the main maximum. The shadow in the glory is of a Twin Otter on skis. Nikon D70 with old 20mm lens (effective 30mm).
[Text: Ken Tape, edited by Günther Können]

2 comments:

Les Cowley said...

3-4 supernumeraries are visible with a little enhancement indicating the value of a polariser – and also that the droplets were reasonably monodisperse and with the same mean size over a wide cloud area.

There is a Mie scattering simulation at www.atoptics.co.uk/cbow.jpg showing that the droplet size was ~22 micron dia. This is approximate because the present simulation averages both polarisation components to reproduce the appearance without a polariser.

Michael Ellestad said...

Wow very impressive!! I did one like that except it was with car headlight on Nov 1st 2005