Natural Optics

Optics in Nature

One of the things I love to do is photograph and study optical phenomena in nature. I watch the sky for interesting colors, halos, coronas, iridescence, aurora, or whatever Mother Nature offers. Work is in progress in my laboratory on an automated aurora detector. In the meantime,we still rely on the old-fashioned approach of watching the sky and calling each other when something good is happening.

A particularly nice opportunity came on Saturday night and early Sunday morning, May 14-15, 2005, when we were treated to a wonderful display of the Aurora Borealis in Bozeman, Montana. The photos shown here were taken by Joseph Shaw with a Nikon D70 camera and 10.5 mm fisheye lens. Please use these only with proper credit to the photographer. Contact me to obtain further information, to see additional images, or to see high-resolution images.
Stay tuned for a more sophisticated page...