Nature is the greatest artist that there ever was and ever will be. It stuns us every day with bold colors, bright lights, and beautiful creatures while providing us with endless entertainment.
While many of us have borne witness to a gorgeous rainbow, you may not be as familiar with another multicolored sky phenomenon known as the cloud iridescence.
Cloud iridescence, also known as irisation, occurs when clouds appear to be rainbowed colored. This breathtaking phenomenon happens when super tiny ice crystals or water droplets are in the air, according to EarthSky. While bigger ice crystals produce solar or lunar halos, the tiny ice crystals or water droplets diffract light and spread it out.
That’s what creates the colorful rainbow coloring in the clouds. Cloud iridescence is a term that comes from the word Iris, which is the Greek personification of the rainbow.
Irisation occurs when parts of clouds are thin and have similar size droplets. This causes diffraction to occur and make colors or corona fragments.
Irisation, however, is not to be confused with circumhorizion arcs. Circumhorizon arc involves a rainbow band that is parallel to the horizon.
The colors in a circumhorizon arc are organized in ROYGBIV order, while the colors in cloud iridescence are randomly dispersed.
“There’s been a lot of very high cloud recently, always a cue for me to look out for more atmospheric optics,” said Dave Walker of the UK who took the photo above.
If you want to see an iridescent cloud more sharply, you can place the sun behind a foreground object, like a building or mountain.
You can also try wearing dark glasses or observing the sky in a convex mirror or pool of water.
The colors in iridescent clouds are more subtle than a regular rainbow and are usually pastel, but there are occasions when they can be more vivid.
The iridescent cloud in the video below is pastel in nature. It was seen in Caxias, Maranhão in Brazil and contains a unique rounded shape.
It’s simply stunning and was a treat for Jean Wybson and his family to spot.
“It’s a very beautiful natural phenomenon,” Wybson, whose video was viewed more than 24,000 times, writes.
We’ll definitely be keeping our eye to the sky to see if we can catch a glimpse of one of these beauties.
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