Monday 21 May 2007

A Star Formation Region?

Unfortunatelly no. I don't know if I should be able to take an image of a similar nebula with my equipment and our usual observation place. What I know is that the weather during the last month has been uncredibly bad. And, what to do when the clouds difficult the observation of the sky?... The direct option is to observe clouds!. And this the subject of the picture. If you observe the clouded sky you can observe very amazing events. The posted image is an altered subscene of this image that I captured from Majadahonda during the May, 19th 2007 morning. It shows a fragment of an iridiscent cloud. This is a well know atmospheric optics phenomena. It is caused by water droplet diffraction in thin clouds with similar size droplets. The colours are organized into coronal rings when the droplet size is uniform across the cloud. The iridiscence is more frequently visible when part of the cloud is forming. During the cloud formation the produced droplets have a similar history and consequently a similar size. However, in other cases the clouds can be random patches or bands at the clouds edges.

In my opinion, after several years seen the atmosphere, during the last times iridiscent clouds are surprisingly frequent. I saw one twenty year ago in high mountain conditions. However during the last two years I have been able to observe several ones from different places and conditions. Can be this something related to a variation of the cloud formation patterns?... you know... Could be related to a climate warming scenario?... the debate is open.