Top Ten Meteorological Wonders in the World ()

Tim Holder, a famous American naturalist, recently published a new book called Gorgeous Sky, which reveals some rare and peculiar natural scenes in the sky. These strange sights include solar halo, mirage and solar wind.

1, an extremely rare fire rainbow

This flat rainbow in the picture is the so-called fire rainbow, also known as "flat arc around the earth". "Horizontal arc around the earth" is an extremely rare optical phenomenon, and it is an ice crystal refraction phenomenon that only occurs when the sun's rays make an angle of 58 degrees with the horizon. It is also called fire rainbow, because it looks like a rainbow burning spontaneously in the sky, across the sky. Fire rainbow is not as easy to see as ordinary rainbow, mainly because that condition is too difficult to meet. First of all, the sun should make an angle of 58 degrees with the horizon, and the sky you observe should have cirrus clouds with a height of 20,000 feet (about 6 100 meters). 2. Strange mirage landscape

Mirages don't just appear in the desert. When light passes through the air, if the air density is uneven due to the sudden change of temperature, it may cause light refraction, thus creating a mirage. This picture is a so-called "mirage". The ship looks much taller than it really is. Usually, many "mirage scenes" also include their reflections. Mirages can be seen not only in the sea and desert, but also occasionally on asphalt roads. Mirage is the result of light refraction in vertical gas layers with different densities. Mirages have been concerned by the world since ancient times. In ancient mythology, a mirage is depicted as the incarnation of the devil, which is a bad omen of death and misfortune. 3. Rare 22-day dizziness

This is a photo of 22-day halo in the blue sky of Zhang Fen, with a tall chimney pointing directly at the center of the halo in the background. This is the so-called "external halo", that is, the peripheral halos are completely coincident. Solar halos often occur, even more common than rainbows, but they are usually invisible to the naked eye because the sunlight is too strong. 4. Two suns set at the same time.

At sunset, due to the refraction of light, the sun on the horizon often looks bigger or even oval. This photo of sunset in the Pacific Ocean is the best embodiment of this visual effect. Severe refraction "flattens" the top of the sun, and the reflection below the sun is the so-called "downward mirage". This is the most common mirage, which can often be seen on the expressway in hot summer.

5. Rare red aurora

The solar wind, which is composed of elementary particles such as protons and electrons, is constantly blowing towards the earth. Fortunately, however, most particles of the solar wind are repelled by the earth's magnetosphere. However, in the polar regions of the earth, some solar particles will still break into the atmosphere, thus forming the aurora phenomenon. The color of the aurora is green. However, due to the high ionization of oxygen over Alaska, this rare red aurora is formed. Aurora has been a mysterious astronomical phenomenon that people have speculated and explored for many centuries. Once upon a time, Eskimos thought Aurora was the torch of ghosts and gods, guiding the souls of the dead to heaven. /kloc-in the 0/3rd century, people thought it was the light reflected by the Greenland ice sheet. It was not until17th century that people officially called it Aurora.

6. Lightning over Arizona

We should still remember a natural common sense in primary school textbooks: If the negative charges at the bottom of clouds keep accumulating and the positive charges on the ground keep increasing, when the voltage between them exceeds the air insulation capacity, lightning will occur. This long lightning bolt happened just above the Silver Bell Mountains in Arizona. Among all kinds of lightning, the rarest is the combined bead lightning, which most people in the world have never seen. This lightning is shaped like a string of shining pearls, extending from the clouds to the ground. Due to the low frequency and short duration of this lightning, people have little research on the causes of this lightning, and the reasons for its formation are still unclear.

7. Sunlight is scattered by water droplets to form colorful rings.

Corona usually refers to the outermost layer of the sun's atmosphere, and the halo can only be seen when there is a solar eclipse. When sunlight passes through small water droplets in the rainforest, it will be scattered into different bands and form a colorful halo as shown in the photo. Rainbow is the dispersion and reflection caused by sunlight shining on small round water droplets in the air. When sunlight enters the water drop, it will be incident at different angles at the same time and reflected at different angles in the water drop. The reflection of 40 to 42 degrees is the strongest, which produces the rainbow we see. In fact, as long as there are water droplets in the air and the sun shines behind the observer at a low angle, an observable rainbow phenomenon may occur.

The dew on the spider's web forms a "dew rainbow". When there are many small water droplets floating in the humid air, light will pass through and form a rainbow. Standard rainbows are not uncommon. However, if the angle of sunlight is low and all the water droplets are attached to a specific surface, a special rainbow phenomenon, the so-called "dew rainbow", will also appear. For example, the dew on the spider web will form a so-called "dew rainbow", and the surfaces of plants such as grass and wild flowers provide a good platform for the formation of the "dew rainbow".

9. There are strange landscapes with mountains and clouds.

Sometimes the light on the top of the mountain looks slightly pink, even when the sun is about to set or below the horizon. This is the so-called "mountain glow" phenomenon. The phenomenon of "dyeing mountains and clouds" is formed because sunlight is refracted by snow on mountains or water droplets and ice particles in the atmosphere.

10, ice crystals refract sunlight to form a solar halo.

This is a photo of the sun's halo, which is formed by the refraction of sunlight by ice crystals in the sky clouds. The ice crystal image is a prism that refracts sunlight at an angle of not less than 22 degrees, thus forming a 22-day halo as shown in the figure. The inner area of the halo will be slightly darker because the sunlight is refracted away. The reason for the formation of solar halo is the appearance of cirrostratus composed of ice crystals at a height of 5000m. The ice crystals in cirrostratus will undergo physical changes such as refraction and reflection after being irradiated by the sun, which will decompose the sun into red, yellow, green, purple and other colors, thus a huge colorful halo will appear around the sun, which is called solar halo. The appearance of solar halo often indicates that the weather will change to some extent.