Derby and District Astronomical Society

Iridescent and Nacreous Clouds

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DDAS member Pete Hill captured the following pictures of iridescent clouds between 18:00 and 18:20 GMT on the 1st February 2016. As much higher clouds are visible above these colourful clouds Pete deemed them to be the lower level iridescent clouds rather than the very high altitude nacreous variety. These shots were taken on a Canon 450D, handheld at F10 and ISO 400, and with exposure times of around 1/50s. Pete used a Tamron 18-270 mm lens using image stabilisation and manual focus with the focus set at infinity for all shots (apart from the third one). The pictures were taken in RAW format and tweaked in Photoshop.




DDAS member Mike Dumelow took this picture of nacreous clouds on the 16th February 1996 using a Praktica SLR camera. Nacreous clouds usually form in winter at a height of 15,000-25,000 m, which means they are slow moving. Nacreous refers to their similarity to the iridescence of Nacre, or Mother of Pearl.




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