redbow

[corvi]

Two days ago at sunset we saw a vertical red streak glowing in the sky at sunset, jutting up from the horizon. It was almost due east, approximately the opposite side of the sky from the sun, and was rather more dramatic against the darkening sky than this grainy cellphone photo suggests.

I think this is a "redbow" - the degenerate red-only rainbow created when sunlight has to travel a bunch of extra distance through the lower atmosphere due to the angle of sunset to get to rainbowville. The extra atmosphere scatters the shorter colours more until only red is left. I'm not entirely sure, because most of the available pictures of redbows online look like unusually reddish rainbows, not just, "a red line in the sky," but this photo looks quite a bit like ours.

So that was neat! I'd never seen one before; I hope I get to again sometime.

Comments

[sistawendy]

TIL!