Back to photostream

Brocken Spectre? See description

I’d been amazed to come across this small circular rainbow along the Ventana Trail. Ward later asked whether it might have been a Brocken Spectre, and I looked it up - indeed it might have been! Wiki: “A Brocken spectre (German: Brockengespenst), also called Brocken bow, mountain spectre, or spectre of the Brocken is the magnified (and apparently enormous) shadow of an observer cast upon clouds opposite the Sun's direction. The figure's head is often surrounded by the halo-like rings of coloured light forming a glory, which appears opposite the Sun's direction when uniformly-sized water droplets in clouds refract and backscatter sunlight.”

1,524 views
70 faves
18 comments
Uploaded on May 7, 2022
Taken on March 29, 2022