ICY SCIENCE: SCIENCE SPACE ASTRONOMY Spring 2014 | Page 75

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Next came the real challenge- trying to capture a glory. The fog was rolling up and down the hill so it seemed
an age with much scrambling up and down walls, machinery, tree branches and mounds of earth to try and
get the best position...it wasn’t easy!
Glories are one of the most amazing optical phenomena, in my opinion, and look like rainbow halos around
the observer’s head. Although glories look similar to rainbows, the way light is scattered to produce them
is slightly different; Rainbows are formed by refraction and reflection, whereas glories are thought to be
formed by backward diffraction. To see them, you have to be directly between the sun and the water
refracting droplets (in this case fog) with your shadow facing into the antisolar point. A glory is sometimes

ICY SCIENCE | QTR 2 SPRING 2014