An Airplane Glory
Image Credit & Copyright: Shane Larson (Adler Planetarium, CIERA-Northwestern)
Explanation: Looking out the window of an airplane, you might be lucky enough to see "the glory" in the direction directly opposite the Sun. Before
airplanes, the phenomenon, known to some as the
heiligenschein or the
Specter of the Brocken, was sometimes seen from mountaintops. There, when conditions were right, one could
look away from the Sun and see what appeared to be the
shadow of a giant surrounded by a bright
halo. The giant turns out to be the observer, as in the modern version a
silhouette of an plane frequently occupies the glory's center. This bright
glory was photographed two weeks ago over
Michigan from an airplane on approach to
O'Hare International Airport. The
cause of the glory is still being researched and is
relatively complex. Surely, small droplets of water in some way
reflect, refract, and diffract sunlight backwards towards the
Sun. The
phenomenon has similar counterparts in other branches of science including
astronomy, where looking out from the Earth in the direction opposite the Sun yields a
bright spot called
the gegenschein.
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