Speaking of glory, one of my favorite sights is the full circle rainbow called a "glory" that can often be seen surrounding an aircraft's shadow on a cloud or bank of fog. They can be stunningly clear and bright under the right conditions. Lots of other cool atmospheric optical effects can be seen from planes - auroras, vivid meteors, spectacular lightning shows, corona discharge, unusual contrail effects from other jets, parhela, scattering from layers of ice crystals. Beautiful stuff, always sad that us passengers have to view them through a tiny dirty scratched up plastic window.
You can see a very similar effect from the ground, where a glory surrounds your head's shadow if it falls onto a cloud bank or layer of mist / fog below you. Seen most often in the mountain regions, but you can see them here in the flatlands as well. Called the Specter of Brocken or Brocken specter, the effect has been well known in Europe since ancient times.
Since everybody sees a different rainbow, the Brocken is only visible to you, surrounding your own head's shadow. If there are multiple people, each will see only his own (unless standing very close together). This was used by folks in times gone by to convince people that they were being singled out for a higher purpose. It is easy to see how well it would have worked on people, because under the right circumstances you can see a brilliant halo on your shadow. Where the distance to the shadow is short like here in the flatlands, colors don't form but you can get an intensely bright halo complete with rays sparkling out of it. I have seen some excellent examples here on fog / steam floating above the river on a cold day (when walking on the levee 20 feet or so above the river), on glittery silt suspended in stream water, even on dew.
So much beauty in nature, so little time to see and savor it. I greatly appreciate it when folks post beautiful pics like those mwilson shared here...
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