Last Thursday evening, this was the view from one of the office windows.

Herringbone Moon, originally uploaded by Kelson.

Later that night, I took this photo. Or rather, these photos, since it’s a composite of two, one which picked up the herringbone pattern of the clouds and one which picked up the moon and the corona surrounding it.

The sunset view as I left the office this evening. The clouds turned even deeper orange over the drive home, with streamers of pink running halfway across the sky.

On Monday evening, I looked out the front window and saw an unusually purple sky. I immediately went out to snap a few pictures, though the camera tried to adjust the exposure too much in most of them, making it really light. This one turned out very close to what I actually saw.

Since then, I’ve discovered (via Bad Astronomy) that it’s the result of volcanic eruptions in Alaska last month. The sulfur dioxide sprayed into the sky has been traveling around the globe, and made it to Southern California by September 1. More photos at SpaceWeather and kbaird.

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.

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.

On the other hand, it does have its compensations:

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*

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.

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.

Just before sunset on Monday, February 12.

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.

There was still fog around, though. One of the blimp hangars at the former MCAS Tustin was almost completely hidden by it:

Last night, the silhouette of those hills was just barely discernible against a faint orange glow, barely visible with so many street lights and traffic lights around.

By Tuesday afternoon the air was still clear in Irvine, since the prevailing winds were blowing west, but the air smelled oddly like a campfire. The smoke plume rose out of the hills to the northeast, sending a band of smoke across the entire northern sky.

I went back out to the same bridge after work, and the plume looked very different. This time it rose up in place, then seemed to jet across the sky in a narrow band. The San Bernardino Gabriel mountains were actually visible below the smoke. (You can just see them in this photo, a lighter silhouette above the silhouette of the nearer hills.)

Looking the other direction showed a beautiful sunset, with bright orange around the sun and brightly-lit cirrus clouds against the blue sky.

Incidentally, don’t miss the LA Times’ photos. Professional photographers have a lot more time to set up a perfect shot than some guy taking pictures on his lunch hour. The Times tends to delete stuff and/or lock it behind an archive fairly quickly, so their set may not be up for long.

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: