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Astronomy & Atmospheric optics

Astronomy - Lightning - Noctilucent clouds - Halos - Rainbows

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Astronomy [top]

Dutch Youth Association for Astronomy (Jongerenwerkgroep voor Sterrenkunde)


Partial solar eclipse 2021Partial solar eclipse 2021, photographed near Groningen through a dark green welder's glass


Comet NEOWISE in 2020Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) above Groningen in the summer of 2020


Comet NEOWISE in 2020Comet NEOWISE (below centre of large image). Upper left shows part of the constellation Ursa Major ("Big Dipper"), the star Capella (α Aurigae) is clearly visible in the lower right.


The 9 February 1990 total lunar eclipse. Each image has been exposed multiple times (scans of photographs of slides).


Start of the eclipseStart of the eclipse


Approaching totalityApproaching totality


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TotalityTotality


End of totalityEnd of totality


Start of slight haziness - end of eclipseStart of slight haziness - end of eclipse



Lightning [top]


Lightning spectrumSpectrum of lightning, photographed with a diffraction grating (600 lines/mm) in front of the camera lens.

Lightning still

Lightning frames

Still photographs from a movie recorded during a summer's night lightning display. Click on the still photographs to see all frames, the full movie is available below. The camera records at 30 frames per second and is equipped with automatic exposure adjustment, which can be noticed in the movie.



Noctilucent clouds [top]

For background information on noctilucent clouds, see for instance the Wikipedia article. Detailed information about all kinds of atmospheric optics can be found at the very elaborate Atmospheric Optics website by Les Cowley.


Noctilucent cloudNoctilucent cloud display above Groningen in the summer of 2020.


Noctilucent cloud A nice display of noctilucent clouds on 12 July 2009, around 23:19 local time (the first I ever observed; from Gelderland, The Netherlands). The display lasted more than half an hour. The exposure time of 2 seconds (on a digital compact camera) makes the scene look brighter than it really was. The star Capella (α Aurigae) is clearly visible above the left greenhouse.




Halos [top]

Detailed information about all kinds of atmospheric optics can be found at the very elaborate Atmospheric Optics website by Les Cowley.


22 degree HaloWell developed 22 degree halo around the sun. The left parhelion ("sun dog") is visible, but the right parhelion is absent. Also visible are the upper tangent arc (cusp like structure touching the 22 degree halo) and the supralateral arc, overlapping with part of the circumzenithal arc (bright colourfull patch near the top of the image).


Lunar HaloAn almost complete 22 degree halo around the full moon (which itself is overexposed). A bright star is visible to the upper right of the moon, outside the halo.


Mars and Lunar HaloA 22 degree halo around the full moon. The bright "star" left of the moon, inside the halo, is actually the planet Mars, which is very close to opposition.


Below are some scans of (photographs of) slides of a really beautiful halo apparition, observed in Death Valley (California) on a sunny afternoon in October 1999. Many photographs have been taken with a polarizing filter in front of the camera in order to suppress the blue Rayleigh scattering from the air a little. The 22 degree halo is visible, sundogs (parhelia) and also the circumzenithal arc are very well visible in some photographs.


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Rainbows [top]


close rainbowA relatively close rainbow, clearly in front of the distant trees.


spider web diffractionDiffraction of sunlight in a spider web, resulting in rainbow colours.


spider web diffractionSlightly different angles of incident light and for observation, revealing rainbow colours around the spider as well.


rainbow in a waterfall Although not really an atmospheric phenomenon in this case, the rainbow photographed in this waterfall in the Alsace (northeastern France) clearly shows that the region between the primary and secondary rainbow is darker than the other regions.