Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 06:18:44 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: "Magnusson, Nancy C." Subject: Saturday's Bombay Hook sky show MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Hi, everyone - This is slightly off-topic, but may be of interest. Those of us who happened to be at Bombay Hook on Saturday were treated to some wonderful sky effects thanks to the cirrus clouds pushing ahead of the front. About 8 AM in addition to 2 sun dogs, a circumzenithal arc appeared high in the sky - this was a first for me. Around noon and again at 1:15 PM we saw portions of circumhorizontal arcs. Truly beautiful. Thanks to John Bjerke for stopping the car caravan so we could get out and admire the sky. And thanks to the winds for blowing the clouds into fortuitous positions. For anyone interested in such effects, I recommend Robert Greenler's book "Rainbows, Halos, and Glories" - it is somewhat technical, but fascinating. Below are a few photo links to the 3 phenomena. Sundogs (Parhelia - a much better term to search on!) http://www.meteoros.de/englisch/ee02e.htm http://home.pf.jcu.cz/~gembem00/obrhtm/parhelia01.htm http://www.cs.stir.ac.uk/~scu/pretties.html - arc link shows both types drawing of some sky effects and where they are in relation to the sun: http://pls.atu.edu/physci/physics/people/psjr/courses/PHSC3033/AtmOptics/sld 041.htm Circumhorizontal arc: http://www.meteoros.de/ee21ee24/ee23_b.htm Eyes to the sky! Nancy Magnusson Howard County, MD ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================