Astronomy Picture of the Day -- A Colorful Solar Corona over the Himalayas

NASA ^ | January 11, 2016 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

Explanation: What are those colorful rings around the Sun? A corona visible only to Earth observers in the right place at the right time. Rings like this will sometimes appear when the Sun or Moon is seen through thin clouds. The effect is created by the quantum mechanical diffraction of light around individual, similarly-sized water droplets in an intervening but mostly-transparent cloud. Since light of different colors has different wavelengths, each color diffracts differently. Solar Coronae are one of the few quantum color effects that can be easily seen with the unaided eye. This type of solar corona is a visual effect due to water in Earth's atmosphere and is altogether different from the solar corona that exists continually around the Sun -- and stands out during a total solar eclipse. In the foreground is the famous Himalayan mountain peak Ama Dablam (Mother's Necklace).

[SunkenCiv]

[Credit and Copyright: Jeff Dai]

[SunkenCiv]

The Big One

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[BwanaNdege]

I'd call that an ice cloud rainbow, rather than a solar corona.

"A corona (Latin, 'crown') is an aura of plasma that surrounds the sun and other celestial bodies. The Sun's corona extends millions of kilometres into space and is most easily seen during a total solar eclipse, but it is also observable with a coronagraph."

[TigersEye]

I have seen depictions of the sun like that in paintings although I can’t remember where. I had assumed that the artist was taking artistic license. Maybe not.

[JoeProBono]

[Daffynition]

[Izzy Dunne]

It’d be better with a Dos Equis.

[Daffynition]

Some depictions of Buddah and Surya, the Sun god have that type of background.

Another Messiah for some

[Slambat]

Nice picture of wasteland. Nothing personal and I do like
your posts but shouldn’t this be a meteorological picture of
the day?

[Daffynition]

[Daffynition]

[SunkenCiv]

Yeah, most of these terrestrial shots kinda suck.

[disndat]

tripping the light fantastic

[TheOldLady]

Wowie! That’s gorgeous, another “hated” terrestrial shot redeems all other terrestrial shots!

I’m a complete sucker for pretty pictures with a panoply of colors in the sky around the Sun.

Thank you for the post and ping to The Big One.

[TheOldLady]

Hey, Joe! Nice to see you.

[JoeFromSidney]

I've seen these a few times and tried photographing them, but somehow the exposure is never right. Congratulations to the photographer for getting this one right.

[Duchess47]

It’s beautiful.

[SunkenCiv]

:’)

[TXnMA]

Probably a good candidate for "HDR" (High Dynamic Range) post-processing using a very wide range of exposures.

It would definitely be worth a try...

[TheOldLady]

;-)

You do a great job, my friend.