Auras and Glories in Nature,
the Laboratory and in Art
In the 1990s I collected beautiful images of atmospheric glories and auras on the
Internet, images that I currently appear unable to recover the source of. I add these
images to this slide series for your viewing pleasure and if you know the source,
please let me know so that I can refer to it.
Auras and aureoles seen in transmission
against the sun or the moon through
monodisperse droplet clouds
Also visit: http://www.atoptics.co.uk/
Aureole in clouds
If you know the source of this photograph,
please let me know so that I can refer to it.
Aureole with poorly developed corona
If you know the source of this photograph,
please let me know so that I can refer to it.
Minnaert:
“Near the moon there is a blueish border, which
transcends into a yellowish white, and this again in its
perimeter has a brownish edge.”
Aureole
Aura around the moon: handheld exposure time 1 second,
photographed 15 november 1986
Original source: www.meteoros.de/kranz/hof5.htm (Picture no longer available)
Visit: www.meteoros.de
Original source: www.meteoros.de/kranz/hof1.htm (Picture no longer available)
Visit: www.meteoros.de
If you know the source of this photograph,
please let me know so that I can refer to it.
www.atm.helsinki.fi/~tpnousia/gengal/corona.html
Aura in sun harp
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~rywang/berkeley/magic_small/rainbows.html
Sun aura
Auras seen through clouds of pollen
and suspensions of algea
Fir
Spruce-fir
100 m
50 m
Visit www.meteoros.de/pollen/pollen.htm
Visit www.meteoros.de/pollen/pollen.htm for a most
interesting overview of corona phenomena in pollen clouds
Pollen clouds of fir
www.meteoros.de/pollen/pollen.htm
Pollen clouds of spruce-fir
www.meteoros.de/pollen/pollen.htm
Pollen clouds of fir
www.meteoros.de/pollen/pollen.htm
Pollen clouds of fir
www.meteoros.de/pollen/pollen.htm
Pollen clouds of fir
Visit: http://www.atm.helsinki.fi/~tpnousia/gengal/gengal.html for a
most interesting gallery of atmospheric phenomena photographed by
Timo Nousiainen
http://www.atm.helsinki.fi/~tpnousia/gengal/pollenc1.html
Pollen clouds of pine
http://atmospherical.blogspot.com/2006_05_01_atmospherical_archive.html
Corona in cloud of birch pollen
A pool containing a dispersion of algae
If you know the source of this photograph, please let me know so that I can refer to it.
Colours caused by a dispersion of algae
www.nic.funet.fi/.../water-colours.html
The glory
And the Brocken spectre
When observing one’s sun-shadow on a monodisperse micro-droplet
fog cloud, these droplets reflect light and turn into lighting rings
through the phenomenon of surface waves.
The glory
1 internal reflection
14.4°
Surface wave
14 internal reflections
17.7°
Surface wave
H.C. Bryant and N. Jarmie, The Glory, Scientific American, July 1974
If you know the source of this photograph,
please let me know so that I can refer to it.
If you know the source of this photograph,
please let me know so that I can refer to it.
If you know the source of this photograph,
please let me know so that I can refer to it.
Fog bow
Glory
Glory and fog bow
If you know the source of this photograph,
please let me know so that I can refer to it.
If you know the source of this photograph,
please let me know so that I can refer to it.
If you know the source of this photograph,
please let me know so that I can refer to it.
The glory
looking down on monodisperse
clouds from planes
If you know the source of this photograph,
please let me know so that I can refer to it.
www.meteoros.de/glorie/gloriee.htm
http://homepage.mac.com/pyandre/page4/files/archive-0.html
If you know the source of this photograph,
please let me know so that I can refer to it.
www.polarization.com/rainbow/glory.html
Glory
Fog bow
www.nadn.navy.mil/Users/oceano/raylee/RainbowBridge/Chapter_8.html
Archimedes 5
1974/75
Artificial auras
Monodisperse distributions of particles:
Steam
Micro-rings
Set-up for photography of coronas in a cloud of steam. A slit was
mounted on the kettle to create a thin steam film.
Aura seen through a cloud of steam
against a white light point source
H.C. Bryant and N. Jarmie, The Glory, Scientific American, July 1974: 241 circles,
randomly drawn on paper, and reduced to a graphical negative with lighting rings.
Image of HeNe laser point source photographed via the negative.
I repeated the aura/glory experiment with a white light point source.
This is a detail of one page A4 with circles I drew with 2 mm diameter
This is the full page A4
Negative of the A4 page
six negatives
mounted together
4 x six A4 pages
reduced to
60 x 60 mm
(20 x reduction)
Total:
65.000 micro-circles
of 100 m diameter
Experimental set-up
Cloud of circles
35 mm
Color film
aperture
3 mm
Point source
Doublet lens
f = 1 meter
Photograph of aura through cloud of lighting circles
Aura and glory in art
Some paintings suggest that the artists personally observed sun
auras or glories, because their colour selection approaches the
colours observed in nature.
Alternatively, the artist has copied the sequence of colours
according to what was customary at the time.
However, the source of the colours must be the perception of the
colour gamut of the natural phenomena of glories and auras.
Lucas van Leyden, triptych of the last judgement (1526),
de Holy Trinity, Lakenhal Museum, Leiden, Netherlands
Hans Memling (1433 - 1494), Christophorus, the central panel
of the moral triptych, Memling museum, Bridges, Belgium
Geertgen tot Sint Jans
1460 - 1490/95
Tryptich of the glorious
Madonna
Museum Boymans van Beuningen
Rotterdam, the Netherlands
Hans Memling (1435/40 - 1494)
Altarpiece of St. John de Babtist and
St. John de Evangelist (1479)
Right panel:
The revelation to John
Memling Museum, Bridges, Belgium
Vincenzo Foppa
(1427 - 1516)
The resurrected Christ
Pinacotheek, Milano, Italy
Master of Moulins
Approx. 1498
Central panel of the
Tryptich of the glorious
Madonna
Cathedral of Moulins
France
Matthias Grünewald
The resurrected Christ
Isenheimer Altar (1512 - 1516)
Museum d’Unterlinden
Colmar, France