APOD: Iridescent Clouds from the Top of... (2011 Feb 08)

[APOD Robot]

Iridescent Clouds from the Top of the World Highway

Explanation: Why would a cloud appear to be different colors? A relatively rare phenomenon known as iridescent clouds can show unusual colors vividly or a whole spectrum of colors simultaneously. These clouds are formed of small water droplets of nearly uniform size. When the Sun is in the right position and mostly hidden by thick clouds, these thinner clouds significantly diffract sunlight in a nearly coherent manner, with different colors being deflected by different amounts. Therefore, different colors will come to the observer from slightly different directions. Many clouds start with uniform regions that could show iridescence but quickly become too thick, too mixed, or too far from the Sun to exhibit striking colors. This iridescent cloud was photographed last year from the Top of the World Highway outside Dawson City, in the Yukon Territory in Northern Canada.

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[bettenoir]

Iridescent clouds aren't that rare. Most people don't see them because they don't look for them. You have to look for iridescence near the sun. For this, you need good sunglasses and something to block the sun itself; I use my hand, most often. While the most spectacular shows can be large sheets of color in thin clouds, more commonly I see color at the ragged edges of patchy clouds.

[Chris Peterson]

Iridescent clouds aren't that rare.

That's for sure. Most of the time if we have thin clouds here, they show this iridescence. It is more rare not to see them.

[León]

Iridescent clouds aren't that rare.

That's for sure. Most of the time if we have thin clouds here, they show this iridescence. It is more rare not to see them.

Socrates: And the truth did not know that they are gods, and believed in them? Strepsiades: certainly not, by Zeus, I took them by fog, mist and steam. The dialogue is "The Clouds " of Aristofanes.

[NoelC]

3 whole posts about brightly colored clouds and no contrail conspiracy theorists discussing chemicals being illicitly distributed to the public by the government? This is some kind of record! I guess the LSD injection system of the Rolls Royce turbine engine is a pretty well guarded secret after all.

-Noel

[neufer]

Iridescent clouds aren't that rare.

That's for sure. Most of the time if we have thin clouds here, they show this iridescence. It is more rare not to see them.

Socrates: And the truth did not know that they are gods, and believed in them?

Strepsiades: certainly not, by Zeus, I took them by fog, mist and steam.

The dialogue is "The Clouds " of Aristophanes.

CHORUS OF CLOUDS singing: Eternal Clouds, let us appear; let us arise from the roaring depths of Ocean, our father; let us fly towards the lofty mountains, spread our damp wings over their forest-laden summits, whence we will dominate the distant valleys, the harvest fed by the sacred earth, the murmur of the divine streams and the resounding waves of the sea, which the unwearying orb lights up with its glittering beams. But let us shake off the rainy fogs, which hide our immortal beauty and sweep the earth from afar with our gaze.

STREPSIADES: Oh! adorable Clouds, I revere you and I too am going to let off my thunder, so greatly has your own affrighted me.

[He farts.] Faith! whether permitted or not, I must, I must crap!

[RJN]

Makes Digg front page. See:
http://digg.com/news/science/apod_2011_ ... ld_highway

[Guest]

I definitely see Joni with guitar looking from the other side...

[RJN]

Just above the colors, I see the head of a fox, including a long neck, a snout, and both ears. Does anyone else see this?
- RJN

[Chris Peterson]

Just above the colors, I see the head of a fox, including a long neck, a snout, and both ears. Does anyone else see this?

I think I see what you're talking about. Just above that, though, I see a deer in profile, with a nice big set of antlers going up and to the right.

[owlice]

I see both the fox head and the deer head. In the intersecting area, I see a small bear head which is part of a larger wolf head. There's the hint of an owl in the lower left of the picture, far away from the fox/deer/bear/wolf!

I hadn't noticed the indigo/violet coloring before, above and to the right of the beast-with-four-heads.

I love this image, and am very glad it is an APOD!

[ddorn777]

In the center of the brightest portion, there is a face very similar to the face on Mars:
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/image/planet ... s/face.jpg

[neufer]

Just above the colors, I see the head of a fox, including a long neck, a snout, and both ears. Does anyone else see this?

I think I see what you're talking about. Just above that, though, I see a deer in profile, with a nice big set of antlers going up and to the right.

<<Sylph (also called sylphid) is a mythological creature in the Western tradition. The term originates in Paracelsus, who describes sylphs as invisible beings of the air, his elementals of air. There is no known substantial mythos associated with them. As alchemy in the West derived from Paracelsus, alchemists and related movements, such as Rosicrucianism, continued to speak of sylphs in their hermetic literature.

The first mainstream western discussion of sylphs comes with Alexander Pope. In Rape of the Lock, Pope satirizes French Rosicrucian and alchemical writings when he invents a theory to explain the sylph. In a parody of heroic poetry and the "dark" and "mysterious" literature of pseudo-science, and in particular the sometimes esoterically Classical heroic poetry of the 18th century in England and France, Pope pretends to have a new alchemy, in which the sylph is the mystically, chemically condensed humors of peevish women (e.g., Ann, Owlice...). In Pope's poem, women who are full of spleen and vanity turn into sylphs when they die because their spirits are too full of dark vapors to ascend to the skies. Belinda, the heroine of Pope's poem, is attended by a small army of sylphs, who foster her vanity and guard her beauty.

This is a parody of Paracelsus, inasmuch as Pope imitates the pseudo-science of alchemy to explain the seriousness with which vain women approach the dressing room. In a slight parody of the divine battle in Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock, when the Baron of the poem attempts to cut a lock of Belinda's hair, the sylphs interpose their airy bodies between the blades of the scissors (to no effect whatsoever). The chief sylph in The Rape of the Lock has the same name as Prospero's servant in Shakespeare's The Tempest: Ariel.

Because of their association with the ballet La Sylphide, where sylphs are identified with fairies and the medieval legends of fairyland, as well as a confusion with other "airy spirits" (e.g., in William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream), a slender girl may be referred to as a sylph. Sylph has passed into general language as a term for minor spirits, elementals, or faeries of the air. Fantasy authors will sometimes employ sylphs in their fiction. Sylphs could create giant artistic clouds in the skies with their airy wings.>>

[Beyond]

OK, OK, I'll do the part of sgt. Shultz. I see NOTHING! I see NOTHING!

[target]

I see a deer's head rather than a fox

[ogie]

The ability to see these patterns is called pareidolia - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia

[BMAONE23]

And the ability to recognise a pattern is called Intelligence

[neufer]

And the ability to recognise a pattern is called Intelligence

--------------------------------------
Brian Greene's restaurant at the end of the parallel universe
By Monica Hesse, Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 4, 2011; 9:44 PM

<<Brian Greene is one of the most famous theoretical physicists in the
world. He specializes in the super-brainy field of string theory, he
has degrees from Harvard and Oxford, he has written four books, he is
one of the few people in the world who has an Erdos-Bacon number,
meaning that he can be traced back to both Hungarian mathematician
Paul Erdos and to Kevin Bacon. So naturally, we are talking about
cheese.

Inasmuch as string theorists can have groupies, Greene has them: grad
student physicists, tinfoil cappers, Madeleine L'Engleites, bored desk
jockeys who like to read Greene's books in prominent, public places
and casually mention their own theories. People see a term like
"theoretical physicist" and mentally lop off the "physicist" part,
leaving a misguided notion that Greene's research is basically a bunch
of guesswork.

"It's kind of an occupational hazard," he says of the fans who to
share their own "research." "On the one hand, I love it because it
shows how curious we are as a species. . . . On the flip side, when I
get a manuscript where someone says, 'I've been working on this for 36
years, and my wife has almost left me, but *HERE it IS* , I've got the
answer' - and its pages and pages of largely incoherent ideas, there's
something deeply sad about that."

"In their minds," he says, "they have Einstein [who was toiling in
obscurity at the patent office when he had some of his most revelatory
thoughts] as an example of how discovery can happen." >>

"There's a fine line between genius and insanity.
I have erased this line." - Oscar Levant (1906 - 1972)

[orin stepanek]

I see a creature that has two eyes toward the top right and below that a snout with a round dark mouth. Must be an alien!

[Beyond]

Well, It's nice to know that i don't have Apophenia

[Star Child]

meteorology picture of the day?

[neufer]

Well, It's nice to know that i don't have Apophenia

I'm not quite sure how you make that connection, Beyond.

[Devil Particle]

Very good.

[Beyond]

The Devil is in the details Particule.

[Beyond]

Well, It's nice to know that i don't have Apophenia

I'm not quite sure how you make that connection, Beyond.

Your avatar kept a straight face when you wrote that, but I'll bet you were snickering and guffawing so much that it was hard for you to hit the right keys