1. Blue Sky and White Clouds
One of the major components of the atmosphere, i.e., Nitrogen, acts as a selective scatterer and scatter visible light of a shorter wavelength (violet, blue and green) more efficiently than the visible light of a longer wavelength (yellow, orange, and red). The sky appears in blue color because our eye is more sensitive to blue light.
A white cloud appears because a large number of cloud droplets scatter all the wavelengths of visible light in all directions, whereas Dark clouds appear when the cloud grows taller, thicker, and larger, so very little light penetrates through the base of the clouds.
2. Blue Moons and Red Suns
Blue moons appear when relatively larger particles of size 0.01-1.0 mm, scatters longer wavelength of visible light (red, orange, yellow), and shorter wavelength reaches our eyes. Our eye sees a blue moon.
Near the sunrise or sunsets, the angle of the Sun rays strikes the atmosphere at a lower angle than during the daytime. Thus, the light penetrates the deeper layer of the atmosphere, and mostly, the visible light of shorter wavelengths has been scattered away. Therefore, the visible light of a longer wavelength (orange, red) reaches our eyes, seeing the red sun. When the atmosphere is fairly clean and clear, bright yellow-orange sunsets occur.
3. Mirage
Mirages are formed due to light bent when it is passing through the atmosphere having different densities. Mirages appear as an inverted reflection of distant objects, and also some objects appear taller than actually; they are
4. Rainbow
A rainbow is a visible light separated into seven different colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet, which always appear in the same order in the main rainbow, with red on top and violet on the bottom. While in the case of the secondary rainbow, it appears in the opposite order. The phenomenon is that the sunlight shine into the water drops present in the air, which acts as a prism that bends or refracts the light and separates into different colors.
5. Sun Dogs and Halo
Another optical phenomenon, i.e., halo produced by the ice crystals preseice crystalsouds, creates a single ri, createsound the Moon or Sun. Light is reflected and refracted by the ice crystals behave like prisms and mirrors and split up into colors due to the dispersion process.
When the light refracts through the flat surfaces of ice crystals, a bright spot of light appears in the sky, usually,, on the left or right sides of the halo; these bright spots are considered Sun dogs. It also appears as a colored patch of light on the sides of the Sun.
6. Corona
Corona is a phenomenon similar to halo but is produced from cloud droplets. The light shines through the cloud droplets, curves around the circular drops,, and gets diffracted, which creates an area of light larger than the Sun or moon.
7. Cloud Iridescence
Another optical phenomenon is also known as irisation, involves the occurrence of different pastel shades of color. These clouds involve the diffraction phenomenon in which the small ice crystals and small water droplets in iridescent clouds individually scatter light.
8. Sun Pillars
AAt sunset and sunrise, sun pillars, are oftenare often called light pillars to appear as vertical shafts extending upward or downward from the Sun. The reflection of sunlight forms these light pillars through the ice crystals.
9. Lightning
Lightning is another phenomenon produced in cumulonimbus clouds which involves the discharge of electricity occurs in a mature
10. Auroral Lights
An aurora is a natural light display, usually occurs in the ionosphere. It is caused by the collision of charged particles directed by the Earth’s magnetic field.
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