Glory

From Glossary of Meteorology
Revision as of 17:09, 26 January 2012 by imported>Perlwikibot (Created page with " {{TermHeader}} {{TermSearch}} <div class="termentry"> <div class="term"> == glory == </div> <div class="definition"><div class="short_definition">Small, faintly colore...")
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)



glory

Small, faintly colored rings of light surrounding the antisolar point, seen when looking down at a water cloud.

Having a radius of only a few degrees, the glory often surrounds an airplane's shadow cast on a cloud or a mountain climber's shadow cast on fog in a valley. (The shadow of the observer plays no role in the phenomenon other than as easy way of quickly finding the antisolar point.)The glory is not as easily described by simple theory as is the corona. Nevertheless, some similarities hold: the angular size of a particular ring is approximately inversely proportional to drop size. The result is that glories are formed by droplets with radii smaller than about 25 μm (the rings from larger droplets are washed out by the angular width of the sun). Similarly, a broad droplet distribution will destroy the glory.


Copyright 2024 American Meteorological Society (AMS). For permission to reuse any portion of this work, please contact permissions@ametsoc.org. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 U.S. Code § 107) or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S.Copyright Act (17 USC § 108) does not require AMS’s permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form, such as on a website or in a searchable database, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statement, require written permission or a license from AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policy statement.