Fog bow

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A fog bow, solar glory and Brocken spectre observed in San Francisco.
A fog bow, solar glory and Brocken spectre observed in San Francisco.
A fog bow, solar glory and Brocken spectre observed in San Francisco.
A fog bow, solar glory and Brocken spectre observed in San Francisco.
A fog bow and solar glory observed in San Francisco.
A fog bow and solar glory observed in San Francisco.

A fog bow is similar to a rainbow, but because of the very small size of water droplets that cause fog, smaller than 0.05 mm, the fog bow has no colors and appears white. Fogbows are sometimes called "white rainbows" or "cloudbows". Mariners sometimes call them "sea-dogs."

Unlike a Glory , which has has multiple pale colored rings caused by diffraction, the fogbow is entirely white.

The fogbow's relative lack of colors are caused by the relatively smaller water drops... so small that the quantum mechanical wavelength of light becomes important and smears out colors that would be created by larger rainbow water drops...[1]

Contents

[edit] Direction

A fogbow is seen in the same direction as a rainbow, thus the sun would be behind the head of the observer and the direction of view would be into a bank of fog (which may not be noticable in directions away from the bow itself).

When a fog bow appears at night it is called a lunar fog bow.[2]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ [1]
  2. ^ Lunar Fogbow

[edit] External links

 This article related to a specific weather event is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.