07/29/2023
One of the most magical moments I have had shooting! All these were taken at Grandfather Mountain about 30 minutes before sunset. This is my second time seeing the Brocken Spectres but never this long. Almost 30 minutes of it occurring! The outer ring you see in some of the photos is a fog bow❤️
Info about them::::::Brocken spectre, also called anticorona, glory, Brocken bow, or mountain spectre, the apparently enormously magnified shadow that an observer casts, when the Sun is low, upon the upper surfaces of clouds that are below the mountain upon which the observer stands. The apparent magnification of size of the shadow is an optical illusion that occurs when the shadow on relatively nearby clouds is judged by the observer to be at the same distance as faraway land objects seen through gaps in the clouds. The phenomenon is often observed on mountain peaks. The observer’s shadow is often surrounded by coloured bands or rings that are the result of the diffraction of sunlight by water droplets in the cloud. The phenomenon of rainbowlike bands around a shadow on a cloud.
