Click on the thumbnails for a larger image.
All photos taken by and (c) Bruce G. Marcot.
A
beautiful rising sun, just cresting the ridgeline of the Himalayas in northern
India on 14 September 2001. Atmospheric haze in the late summer monsoon
season filtered out just enough light so I could photograph the solar disk.
Several sunspots are barely visible; compare to next image below.
(Taken with a Nikon FM-2 SLR 35-mm camera using a 400-mm telephoto with
2x doubler (thus, 800 mm), and Kodak Ektrachrome ASA 400 film.)
The
same image as above but computer-enhanced to display the sunspots.
I first ran an edge-detect function on the image, then converted to grayscale,
then decreased the gamma correction to display the sunspots more clearly.
A
"sundog" rainbow. I photographed this during November in a remote
section of Inner Mongolia, China, north of the town of Chifeng. The
sun is to the left (out of the picture frame) and also had a faint halo
around it. A second, mirror-image sundog appeared on the opposite
side of the sun at the same altitude. Sundogs and solar halos are
caused by ice particles in the upper atmosphere refracting light.
On this day, the temperature hovered at 20F (-6C). Halos are white
whereas sundogs are rainbows.