K-Squared Ramblings

Stringy Clouds at Sunset

Sunset on Tuesday, March 25th, with feathery cirrus clouds and contrails. A faint sundog is visible as a slight brightening at the level of the sun, about 2/3 of the way across the picture.

Sunset

View from the office parking lot earlier this evening:

Mauna Kea Sky Shadow

Today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day features a view of Mauna Kea’s shadow on the sky, just at the tail end of last week’s lunar eclipse:

I couldn’t help but be reminded of our visit to the summit in April 2005, just at sunset, when I took this similar (but decidedly less cool) photo:

Atmospheric Optics explains why most mountains’ shadows look triangular when viewed from their summits.

Compensations

Losing a tree to last weekend’s Santa Ana winds means there’s no more shade in the afternoon. Not an issue most of this past week, but Sunday was both sunny and hot, and with the window closed and the blinds open, all that heat went straight into the living room.

On the other hand, it does have its compensations:

Golden Lining

Friday, September 28:

Adding to the mish-mash of photo sources on here, this is a still frame from a video clip taken out the window of the car. It wasn’t supposed to be a video clip, but my camera has a sliding switch for selecting photo/video/review, and it has a tendency to shift while in a pocket or bag. *grumble*

Cobweb-cloud sunset

I stepped out of the office last Thursday (September 27—it was a good week for interesting late-afternoon skies) and saw this view to the west.

The clouds glowing as if from within, and the curved bands as if the whole set had been dragged across the sky, reminded me a bit of pictures of reflection nebulae.

Crimson Rainbow

Friday was the first rain we’d seen in over a month. By evening, the trailing edge of the storm was starting to cross central Orange County, and I actually drove back into the cloud cover to pick Katie up from work. We ended up stopping for dinner, and got back on the road around sunset.

At sunset, there were clouds above us, rain in the east, and clear skies to the west, showing a bright orange sun. We looked to the east, and saw a huge rainbow. It was extremely high—it looked like it ought to be an entire circle, even though I knew it couldn’t be more than a semicircle. That doesn’t come through in the one photo that came out, since it’s a matter of perception: neither of us had ever seen a rainbow centered at the horizon before. It was also faint (I had to increase the contrast on this photo), and very red.

Google Images pulls up some nice pictures when you search for rainbow sunset. I particularly like this one at Flickr, which also shows spoke-like rays. Atmospheric Optics’ rainbow section is also worth a look, especially for some of the odd kinds of rainbows that aren’t often seen.

Two Sunsets

Just after sunset on Wednesday, February 7.

Just before sunset on Monday, February 12.

Evening Skies

Here are a couple of photos, one just before sunset, the other just after, over the past month.

First up is a twilight view of South Coast Plaza. On Friday the 13th, we went to the nearest Borders to pick up The End of Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events and Neil Gaiman’s new short story collection, Fragile Things. We ended up crossing the bridge over to the main section of the mall, turned around, and saw an amazing twilight display with clouds silhouetted against the blue.

We stopped to take pictures. We weren’t the only ones.

Perhaps an hour later, the rainstorm arrived.

Next up is from this past Monday, October 23. I was driving up the 405 after work and noticed that there were some feathery clouds in the right area, so I started looking for sundogs. Normally I don’t find anything. It’s Southern California, after all, so the right conditions are relatively rare. (Though occasionally I see something spectacular like the full halo I caught in February.)

To my surprise, I saw a faint bright spot in the clouds, level with and to the right of the sun. It got brighter over the course of my drive, with hints of red, orange and yellow creeping in on the sunward side: a classic sundog. Once I got onto city streets, I had a chance to stop and take a picture.

Smoke and Fog

Monday morning dawned foggy. By the time we left for work, most of the fog had burned off, but we looked out the car window and saw a huge, billowing gray cloud hugging close to the ground. If this had been the usual fire season, or if there had been no fog to start with (or if there had been time for coffee to take effect), I think we would’ve both immediately recognized it as smoke from a brush fire. The Sierra fire in the Cleveland National Forest had started just a few hours earlier.

There was still fog around, though. Read the rest of this entry »

Sunrise, Sunset

The first photo is from Wednesday morning around 8:00. Katie took it on our drive to work. There’s actually another shot that shows more of the sky, but this one is more striking. The second shows tonight’s sunset as seen from the Metro Pointe parking lot. Yes, it’s a freeway in the foreground, but the sunset itself was incredible. Both thumbnails are linked to larger copies of the photos.

Finally, here are some vaguely lenticularish clouds I saw looking north at sunset on Friday. This one’s full-size already:

That Belt of Venus Thing

About a month ago I posted about noticing the Belt of Venus—the red band that circles the entire horizon just after sunset—and the Earth’s shadow on the sky. I snapped this picture on the drive home this evening. This is looking east, away from the setting sun.

If you look at the right edge of the picture, behind the silhouette of the tree, you can just see the red band fading into the dark gray of the Earth’s shadow.

(And to think, I almost brought the good camera with me this morning… Update: It turns out that I did bring it, and just didn’t realize it was there. Oh, well.)

Feathered Sunset

Here’s a picture of last Wednesday’s sunset (September 14) as seen from the 405 in Irvine.

The photo links to a larger copy.

And no, I wasn’t trying to get the “monolith” in there. I don’t remember exactly where this was, so I’m not even sure what the sign is for.

Look, up in the sky!

A few nights ago I was walking around sunset, and decided to look for something that had been mentioned last week on the Astronomy Picture of the Day: the Belt of Venus.

Somehow I’d never noticed that after sunset, the band of red encircles the entire sky at the horizon. Even more amazing, if you look away from the sun you can actually see the Earth’s shadow on the sky as a slightly darker blue below the pink. It reminded me of the view of Mauna Kea’s shadow on the cloud layer below. Oddly, though I didn’t pay any attention to it at the time, the Belt of Venus is clearly visible in that photo!

I guess at sunset I’m most likely to be looking at, well, the sunset. Or focusing on whatever it is I’m doing at the time.

This was Thursday night, so the moon was almost full. It rose just below the Belt of Venus, just inside the shadow. So close to the horizon, the moon illusion was in full effect, and it looked huge!

And me without my camera. *sigh*

Mauna Kea

And now for something completely different: Hawaiian snow. On our second-to-last day in Hawaii, we took a tour up to the summit of Mauna Kea, the highest mountain in the state at 13,796 feet. And even in early April, they still had snow at the summit.

We caught a somewhat hazy view of it from the west, in the Kohala area, but our best view of the mountain actually came the day after the tour, on our drive out to Akaka Falls. We’re probably due east of the mountain here:

Read the rest of this entry »