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Light rays enter a raindrop from one direction (typically a straight line from the Sun), reflect off the back of the raindrop, and fan out as they leave the raindrop. The light leaving the raindrop is spread over a wide angle, with a maximum intensity at 40.89–42°.
The whole system composed by the Sun's rays, the observer's head, and the (spherical) water drops has an axial symmetry around the axis through the observer's head and parallel to the Sun's rays. The rainbow is curved because the set of all the raindrops that have the right angle between the observer, the drop, and the Sun, lie on a cone ...
Rays from each object point can be mathematically propagated to locate the corresponding point on the image. A slightly more rigorous definition of a light ray follows from Fermat's principle, which states that the path taken between two points by a ray of light is the path that can be traversed in the least time. [3]
The glass casts a shadow, but also produces a curved region of bright light. In ideal circumstances (including perfectly parallel rays, as if from a point source at infinity), a nephroid-shaped patch of light can be produced. [3] [4] Rippling caustics are commonly formed when light shines through waves on a body of water.
Ray tracing of a beam of light passing through a medium with changing refractive index.The ray is advanced by a small amount, and then the direction is re-calculated. Ray tracing works by assuming that the particle or wave can be modeled as a large number of very narrow beams (), and that there exists some distance, possibly very small, over which such a ray is locally straight.
The 46° halo was first explained as being caused by refractions through ice crystals in 1679 by the French physicist Edmé Mariotte (1620–1684) in terms of light refraction [1] Jacobowitz in 1971 was the first to apply the ray-tracing technique to hexagonal ice crystal. Wendling et al. (1979) extended Jacobowitz's work from hexagonal ice ...
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Crepuscular rays are noticeable when the contrast between light and dark is most obvious. Crepuscular comes from the Latin word crepusculum, meaning "twilight". [2] Crepuscular rays usually appear orange because the path through the atmosphere at dawn and dusk passes through up to 40 times as much air as rays from a high Sun at noon.