Clouds and Sun Dogs

While out for our after tea walk I noticed a Sun Dog - where a group of clouds show the colours of the rainbow. It had disappeared by the time we got back home but I kept an eye in that direction in case it should appear again. Patience was rewarded as two appeared, one each side  of the Sun and at about the same elevation. They were not as well defined as the ones I saw last year so I took lots of shots in the hope that I could capture the event.

South side Sun Dog                                                   North side Sun Dog
  

The red part of the spectrum is on the side nearest the Sun.
You can read about how Sun Dogs are formed HERE.

There was quite a variety of cloud formations and, inspired by Adrian of Adrian's Images, I tried a few panoramic compositions taking three shots with the TZ7 on its widest angle setting. The first was taken while the Sun was above the horizon but behind the trees. It was processed using Serif Panorama Plus 2, which is a free program.

 

The resulting panorama was then tweaked with the ReDynaMix plug-in in Photoshop Elements 10:



For some reason the set of three shots taken as the Sun started to set were rejected by Serif's program so were stitched in Elements and tweaked as before:



On days like yesterday where the cloud shapes and movement show how winds at various levels move in different directions it is easy to see why weather prediction can still be very hit and miss, especially on a local level.

Friday at the Flicks - Bird Visitors + Sun Dog

Not a lot going on on the video front this past week. Here are three recent visiting birds that I don't see very often at the moment.



Late yesterday afternoon I was looking at some of the swirling cirrus cloud formations. I happened to glance generally in the direct of the Sun when I noticed a small section of cloud that was coloured - a Sun Dog. Only the second time I have seen this and it was the very devil to photograph but I did manage one reasonable shot:



This rainbow effect is caused by the Sun's rays refracting through ice crystals in the clouds.