Simultaneous observation of a glory and in-situ microphysical cloud properties

Appl Opt. 2017 Jul 1;56(19):G5-G8. doi: 10.1364/AO.56.0000G5.

Abstract

While making airborne measurements of cloud particles, a bright glory was observed on a thin layer cloud. By deliberately flying through this glory-producing cloud on several occasions, cloud particle size distributions were obtained. We found that warm liquid clouds with narrow cloud droplet size distributions are responsible for producing the observed glory. This paper presents these results and compares the results of Mie theory simulations with an image of the glory.