Glory (optical phenomenon)

A glory is an optical phenomenon that resembles an iconic saint's halo about the shadow of the observer's head, caused by light of the Sun or (more rarely) the Moon interacting with the tiny water droplets that make up mist or clouds. The glory consists of one or more concentric, successively dimmer rings, each of which is red on the outside and bluish towards the centre. Due to its appearance, the phenomenon is sometimes mistaken for a circular rainbow, but the latter has a much larger diameter and is caused by different physical processes.

The cause of the glory remains a matter of scholarly debate.

Depending on circumstances (such as the uniformity of droplet size in the clouds), one or more of the glory's rings can be visible. The angular size of the inner and brightest ring is much smaller than that of a rainbow, about 5° to 20°, depending on the size of the droplets. In the right conditions, a glory and a rainbow can occur simultaneously.

Like a rainbow, a glory is centered on the antisolar (or, in case of the Moon, antilunar) point, which coincides with the shadow of the observer's head. Since this point is by definition diametrically opposed to the Sun's (or Moon's) position in the sky, it always lies below the observer's horizon when the Sun (Moon) is up. In order to see a glory, therefore, the clouds or fog causing it must be located below the observer, in a straight line with the Sun/Moon and the observer's eye. Hence, the glory is commonly observed from a high viewpoint such as a mountain, tall building or from an aircraft. In the latter case, if the plane is flying sufficiently low for its shadow to be visible on the clouds, the glory always surrounds it. This is sometimes called The Glory of the Pilot.

When viewed from a mountain or tall building, glories are often seen in association with a Brocken spectre, also called Mountain Spectre, the apparently enormously magnified shadow of an observer, cast (when the Sun is low) on clouds below the mountain on which the viewer is standing. The name derives from the Brocken, the tallest peak of the Harz mountain range in Germany. Because the peak is above the cloud level and the area frequently misty, conditions conducive to casting a shadow on a cloud layer are common. Giant shadows that seemed to move by themselves due to movement of the cloud layer (this movement is another part of the definition of the Brocken Spectre), and that were surrounded by glories, may have contributed to the reputation the Harz mountains hold as a refuge for witches and evil spirits. In Goethe's Faust, the Brocken is called the Blocksberg and is the site of the Witches' Sabbath on Walpurgis Night.

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