Hole in the Clouds


Tag: (Image credit: Ken Scott)

Dark Shadow

Sep 3, 2011

On June 30, 2011, rhe cloud at the righthand side of the sky in this picture cast a big shadow over the West Arm of Grand Traverse Bay, near Traverse City, Michigan. That's because the sun had already set, and its last rays were hitting the cloud from a very low angle, well below the horizon.

The top of the shadow looks curved, I'm told, because of the extremely wide angle of vision here. It's a perspective thing–we think of the horizon line off in the distance as a straight line, but in a wide-angled scene like this we can see that it's actually a curved arc. For a few minutes, the shadow darkens a wedge of the celestial sphere; then this part of the world turns away and the scene is in serious earth shadow, not just cloud shadow, till morning.

landscape   sunset   Michigan   Grand Traverse Bay   cloud   Traverse City   shadow   (Image credit: Ken Scott)