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One common example is the rainbow, when light from the Sun is reflected and refracted by water droplets. Some phenomena, such as the green ray, are so rare they are sometimes thought to be mythical. [2] Others, such as Fata Morganas, are commonplace in favored locations. Other phenomena are simply interesting aspects of optics, or
Meteorological optical phenomena, as described in this article, are concerned with how the optical properties of Earth's atmosphere cause a wide range of optical phenomena and visual perception phenomena. Examples of meteorological phenomena include: The blue color of the sky.
Atmospheric optical phenomena include: Afterglow; Airglow; Alexander's band, the dark region between the two bows of a double rainbow. Alpenglow; Anthelion; Anticrepuscular rays; Aurora (northern and southern lights, aurora borealis and aurora australis) Belt of Venus; Brocken Spectre; Circumhorizontal arc; Circumzenithal arc; Cloud iridescence ...
Another example is incandescent light bulbs, which emit only around 10% of their energy as visible light and the remainder as infrared. A common thermal light source in history is the glowing solid particles in flames, but these also emit most of their radiation in the infrared and only a fraction in the visible spectrum.
Light spectrum, from Theory of Colours – Goethe observed that colour arises at the edges, and the spectrum occurs where these coloured edges overlap.. Theory of Colours (German: Zur Farbenlehre) is a book by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe about the poet's views on the nature of colours and how they are perceived by humans.
A mirage of an astronomical object is a naturally occurring optical phenomenon in which light rays are bent to produce distorted or multiple images of an astronomical object. Mirages can be observed for such astronomical objects as the Sun , the Moon , the planets , bright stars , and very bright comets .
Impressions of several natural phenomena and the principles of some optical toys have been attributed to persistence of vision. In 1768, Patrick D'Arcy recognised the effect in "the luminous ring that we see by turning a torch quickly, the fire wheels in the fireworks, the flattened spindle shape we see in a vibrating cord, the continuous circle we see in a cogwheel that turns with speed". [8]
The fact that light could be polarized was for the first time qualitatively explained by Newton using the particle theory. Étienne-Louis Malus in 1810 created a mathematical particle theory of polarization. Jean-Baptiste Biot in 1812 showed that this theory explained all known phenomena of light polarization. At that time polarization was ...