Pictures and albums about High-level-clouds published in outdoors

Webshots Featured Homepage POTD 06 October 2007 ~ Featured Member's Choice Most Viewed and Most Downloaded Outdoors and Outdoors Fall Scenics 04 October 2007 ~ A spectacular bolt of scarlet red light beams straight up into the night sky at sunset. Image is unaltered, unedited, with no post-processing. ~ "Reds, yellows and golds arise because the air itself, small dust and aerosol particles smaller than the wavelengths of visible light, 'Rayleigh scatterers', scatter short wavelength blue and green rays much more strongly than longer wavelength yellow and red. The remaining direct unscattered light is dimmed but relatively enriched in reds and yellows. Absorption of specific green and blue wavelengths by ozone and water vapour molecules redden the light further. The sunset rays are sometimes reflected back and forth between clouds and the ground. All this goes to makes a spectacle seemingly painted with every colour and shade of the palette. Pillars are created by reflections from approximately horizontal crystal faces but the side faces of columns are inclined at all angles. The key is that the crystals have orderly orientations - they do not tumble. A 'singly oriented column' drifts with its long axis nearly horizontal and has two rotational freedoms. Its long axis can point in all azimuthal, NSEW, directions. The crystal adopts all rotational positions around the long axis." A sun pillar is a vertical shaft of light extending upward or downward from the sun. Typically seen during sunrise or sunset, sun pillars form when sunlight reflects off the surfaces of falling ice crystals associated with thin, high-level clouds such as cirrostratus. The hexagonal plate-like ice crystals fall with a horizontal orientation, gently rocking from side to side as they fall. When the sun is low on the horizon, an area of brightness appears in the sky above (or below) the sun as sunlight is reflected off the surfaces of these tipped ice crystals. ~ http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/atmos/blusky.html ~

"Snow-white! Snow-white! O Lady clear! O Queen beyond the Western Seas! O Light to us that wander here Amid the world of woven trees! Gilthoniel! O Elbereth! Clear are thy eyes and bright thy breath! Snow-white! Snow-white! We sing to thee In a far land beyond the Sea. O stars in the Sunless Year With shining hand by her were sown, In windy fields now bright and clear We see your silver blossom blown! Oh Elbereth! Gilthoniel! We still remember, we who dwell In this far land beneath the trees, Thy starlight on the Western Seas" ~ Poetry by J.R.R. Tolkien