WC555 Iridescent Clouds
by Scott Fricke
I took this image this January near my house. I had been driving home from getting lunch and noticed these iridescent clouds around the sun and they were the most vibrant I had ever seen. By the time I got home and got my camera out they had diminished in color quite a bit but were still impressive. I like this one because it looks like there is a vortex in the cloud, sucking the other ones in.
From Wikipedia: Iridescent clouds are a diffraction phenomenon cause by small water droplets or small ice crystals individually scattering light. If parts of clouds have small droplets or crystals of similar size, their cumulative effect is seen as colors. The cloud must be optically thin, so that most rays encounter only a single droplet. Iridescence is therefore mostly seen at cloud edges or in semi-transparent clouds, and newly forming clouds produce the brightest and most colorful iridescence.
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