Plane Contrail and Sun Halo
Image Credit & Copyright: Alexandros Maragos
Explanation: What's happened to the sky? Several common features of the
daytime sky are interacting in uncommon ways. First, well behind the
silhouetted hills, is the typically bright
Sun. In front of the Sun are thin clouds, possibly the home to a layer of
hexagonal ice crystals that together are creating the
22 degree halo of light
surrounding the Sun. The unusual bent line that crosses the image is a
contrail -- a type of cloud created by a passing airplane. Much of the
contrail must actually be further away than the thin cloud because it casts a shadow onto the cloud, giving an unusual
three-dimensional quality to the featured image. The
featured image was taken in late January in the
city of
Patras in West
Greece.
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