Mastodawn

Just eight days ago, I gave a popular science talk at @mpi_grav about colorful phenomena in the sky, and now – boom!

Just minutes ago, there were beautiful iridescent clouds (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_iridescence) here, north of Hanover, Germany.

Here, light is diffracted by tiny droplets in the clouds, creating these typical mother-of-pearl colors.

The reason I went outside to take photos was because of this fascinating phenomenon.

This is a “dissipation trail”, or “distrail” for short, which is essentially the opposite of an airplane's contrail (condensation trail).

Here, the aircraft exhausts temporarily dissolve the clouds. However, new clouds can then form again along the distrail.

@benknispel so its like to opposite of the mind altering chemicals some people think? :-) #sarcasm #joke

@BigG Must be 😃

@benknispel thanks for making me smarter. I never realized that contrail was a contraction of condensation trail.