Kevin Palmer

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  • This double rainbow appeared in a receding rain shower near Parkman. It later became a supernumerary rainbow. But I'm not sure what it's called when all the colors seem to blend together in the middle.
    Parkman Double Rainbow
  • Early in the morning the northern horizon glowed green. This was caused by a geomagnetic storm from a recurring coronal hole on the sun. A coronal hole is an opening in the outer atmosphere of the sun that allows the high-speed solar wind to escape, which triggers the aurora when it impacts Earth’s magnetic field. Since the sun rotates on it’s axis every 27 days, this can be predicted in advance. I saw the aurora from this coronal hole in September, but last month it was too cloudy. I was determined to see it again this weekend even if it meant staying up all night dodging clouds (aurora hunting is an addiction). The infrared satellite showed a gap in the clouds moving in at 2AM, so I made some coffee and found a dark spot on the Wyoming/Montana state line to watch and wait. It wasn’t the best display I've seen, but I’ll take what I can get during solar minimum, and the meteor was a nice bonus.
    Parkman Pond Aurora - 54
  • Early in the morning the northern horizon glowed green. This was caused by a geomagnetic storm from a recurring coronal hole on the sun. A coronal hole is an opening in the outer atmosphere of the sun that allows the high-speed solar wind to escape, which triggers the aurora when it impacts Earth’s magnetic field. Since the sun rotates on it’s axis every 27 days, this can be predicted in advance. I saw the aurora from this coronal hole in September, but last month it was too cloudy. I was determined to see it again this weekend even if it meant staying up all night dodging clouds (aurora hunting is an addiction). The infrared satellite showed a gap in the clouds moving in at 2AM, so I made some coffee and found a dark spot on the Wyoming/Montana state line to watch and wait. It wasn’t the best display I've seen, but I’ll take what I can get during solar minimum, and the meteor was a nice bonus.
    Parkman Pond Aurora - 32
  • I chased a few thunderstorms that rolled off of the mountains in the afternoon. It was good rainbow weather, but they can't form in the middle of the day. Since the radius of a rainbow is always 42° and the center is directly opposite the sun (antisolar point), the sun must be at an altitude less than 42°. Around 5PM, the sun sank to 32° and this low rainbow appeared about 10° above the horizon. I stopped at this wetland and was able to cover my camera from the rain and capture a time lapse clip that I've tried many times to get. The extra colors (green, purple, green) at the bottom of the bow are called supernumeraries. It's a rare effect that happens when the raindrops are a specific diameter and mostly uniform in size. This complex light interference can't be explained by geometric optics. In fact, supernumerary rainbows played a part in the early 1800's in confirming that light is a wave, and not just made up of particles as previously thought.
    Supernumerary Rainbow