There are many times when the camera can see things the eye can’t. Examples include freezing a very fast action, blurring moving water, the multitude of stars in the night sky, and situations like I encountered recently.
During an early morning walk with my wife, Jann, through Sunapee Harbor, I made the 5-photo panoramic image that you see here. As I took the last few photos directly at the sun, I thought I saw some cloud iridescence.
I wasn’t sure that I saw the colors through my viewfinder, so I quickly took a second photo zoomed into the clouds.
I tried to see the colors in the clouds with my naked eye, but either the sun was too bright, even when I blocked it with my fist, or the colors had already disappeared. Sometimes they last a long time and sometimes they are fleeting.
So we continued our walk — Jann was already 50 yards beyond me. I figured I could take a look when I downloaded the images. I did that this morning and sure enough, there were iridescent clouds over the harbor. You can clearly see the yellows, but there are also subtle traces of red, green, and cyan in the clouds.
Iridescent clouds are a diffraction phenomenon caused by small water droplets or small ice crystals individually scattering light. The colors are usually pastel pinks, greens, and blues arranged in smudges or orderly bands, especially at the clouds’ edges. The colors can sometimes be very vivid.
If you want to learn more about this and other optical phenomena in the sky you can visit this page: Celestial Lights.