Status Updates From The Cloud Collector's Handbook

Sun’s elevation: below 30 degrees from the horizon, but best when at 22 degrees.

Sundogs always appear level with the Sun.

The distance from Sun or Moon to the edge of the ring is equivalent to the outstretched span of a hand held up at arm’s length.

Cloudbows are like rainbows, but with much paler colors. In fact, they often don’t show any discernible colors at all—looking like albino rainbows, or the ghosts of rainbows past.

Convection clouds are the best sort for making rainbows, as they’re more likely to produce showers when the sky around is clear, allowing direct sunlight to shine on them.

The perspective can make the legs of your shadow flare out so, what with the multicolored halo, it looks like a ghost from the 1970s.

Crepuscular rays appear when the path of sunlight is made visible by tiny atmospheric particles too scarce to appear as cloud, but plentiful enough to scatter the light noticeably.

Closely related to cloud iridescence, coronae are caused when the light is diffracted as it passes around a cloud’s particles. Only if these are all very small and the cloud layer is thin will the colors of the corona appear distinct around the central bright disc. The smaller the cloud droplets, the larger the corona.