Iridescent Clouds

This was a really cool phenomenon I got to witness last night! Whenever you see a rainbow, you see something called Rayleigh Scattering. This occurs when light is refracted differently for each wavelength of visible light passing through a medium (in our case the atmosphere). This is what causes rainbows, colorful sunrises/sunsets, moon bows, and iridescent clouds like you see here. I've enhanced the colors in the first image to emphasize the different colors in the clouds. The second image is more true to what it looks like visually. I hope y'all enjoy and get out to see the moon this week :)

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Nikon 35mm f/1.8

Stock Nikon D5500

Handheld

 

Captured on 1/29/2021 @ 11:15pm

HDR composite of:

1 x 1s @ f/2

1 x 0.6s @ f/4

1 x 1/60s @ f/4

ISO 200

Done