Nacreous Clouds

First guest post!
Or, perhaps, a reblog, but I asked her if I could link it as a guest post.

(bigger image for gorgeous colors)

Last year, I posted a few pictures of this dazzling phenomenon I observed in the sky.

A year later, thanks to the Collins Weather Wild Guide, I have learned that what I saw were nacreous clouds, a form of iridescence.

Something I already knew: Nacreous clouds are rare, and I was very lucky to observe them.

that weird green stuff

How cool is this?
As I explore my Yosemite astro-timelapses, I realize my Canon 5dM2 was picking up faint aurora borealis the whole time! (from @YosemiteSteve on twitter)

What an awesome treat, and it looks hard to have noticed in the moment.

What if Earth had rings like Saturn?

I don't want to interrupt the loveliness of this idea, but there are bits from the video and the comments that I want to note:

Someone commented that this might make places under the rings where it was permanently dark. But because the earth is tilted on its axis and the sun appears to move north and south through the sky seasonally, so would the shadow move. But it's likely some places (the equator, generally everywhere between the tropics) would get some level of shade from the rings. The layer is very thin; aside from under the rings at equinox, there would be plenty of bright sun. Would there be enough insolation change to affect climate? Probably. But given the scenario, I expect the earth would have evolved this way, it's not like it would be a change from how things are now.

The person who made the animation seems to have designed it for equinox. Seasonal variations aren't addressed at all.

The theoreticals (e.g. one commenter's note that this would affect satellites) are irrelevant to me: It's beautiful.

ah, for the wide open skies

I grew up under stars like this, but now I live in the city, and I live in a city that gets marine layer fog many nights all summer. An onshore breeze brings the low clouds in around 4 or 5 pm, and they go out again the next morning, but we can't ever count on seeing the sky.

Next spring, I think, I want to go up to Northern California -- the northeastern corner, Modoc County, and camp for a few days, and watch the Milky Way move like this:

Thank God men cannot fly

sunrise
Originally uploaded by Fotopath.

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth. ~Henry David Thoreau