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

[redsixwing]

Neat!

It could also be a sun pillar, but I've never seen one redshift like that.

Very cool either way! Thanks for posting this.

(Linked from ysabetwordsmith.)

[corvi]

Thanks for stopping by! My first though was an ice halo effect as well. "What IS that thing" quest started by looking up which ice halos could form at the antisolar point, like the anthelion and Wegener arcs, but nothing turned up online looked much like "vertical red line in the sky".

Not totally sold on redbow either - it was more vertical than any redbow photo I found online - but it seems like the best match.

Let me know if you happen to think of something. :)

[redsixwing]

I've done some poking around over the last few days and haven't found anything that looks like a closer match. You saw something really cool. :D