Posted on by Bob King

Gesundheit! Hairy And Sneeze-worthy Rings Snare Summer Sun

Billions of aspen seeds float by the sun on tiny hairs creating a multicolored corona around the sun yesterday. To see and photograph the rings, I used a power pole to block the sun. Credit: Bob King

For the past two weeks puffy clumps of seeds have been riding the air in my town. You can’t avoid them. Open a door and they’ll breeze right in. Take a deep breath and you’d better be careful you don’t take a few down the windpipe.

Every June the many aspen trees that call northern Minnesota home release their booty of tiny seeds that parachute through the air on tiny clusters of hairs.  And while they all have no particular place to go, their combined and unintentional effect is to create a series of beautiful colored rings about the Sun called a corona.

A single aspen seed (left) only about 1 mm across embedded in a cottony fluff of tiny hairs. At right is a spider web. Both show colors caused by bending and interference of light, a phenomenon called diffraction. Credit: Bob King (left) and Andrew Kirk
A single aspen seed (left) only about 1 mm across embedded in a cottony fluff of tiny hairs. At right is a spider web. Both show colors caused by bending and interference of light, a phenomenon called diffraction. Credit: Bob King (left) and Andrew Kirk

Reach your hand up to block the Sun and if your eyes can stand the glare of blue-white sky, you’ll see bazillions of tiny flecks a-flying. If you were to capture one and study it up close, you’d see it diffract light in tiny glimmers of chrome green and purple.

When light from the sun or moon strikes a tiny water droplet, speck of pollen or aspen seed hairs, it's scattered in different directions. Some of the scattered waves reinforce each other to make a bright ring of light in the sky while other waves cancel each other out to create a dimmer ring. A series of alternating rings around the sun is called a diffraction pattern or corona. Credit and copyright: Les Cowley www.atoptics.co.uk
When light from the sun or moon strikes a tiny water droplet, speck of pollen or aspen seed hairs, it’s scattered in different directions. Some of the scattered waves reinforce each other to make a bright ring of light in the sky while other waves cancel each other out to create a dimmer ring. A series of alternating rings around the sun is called a diffraction pattern or corona. Credit and copyright: Les Cowley www.atoptics.co.uk

Light is always getting messed with by tiny things. When it comes to aspen seeds, as rays of light – made of every color of the rainbow – bend around the hairy obstacles they interfere with one another like overlapping, expanding wave circles in a pond. Some of the waves reinforce each another and others cancel out. Our eyes see a series of colored fringes that flash about the tiny hairs.

Most halos are circular but pollen halos like this one around the moon often have unusual shapes like this oval with bulging sides and top. Credit: Bob King
Most halos are circular but pollen halos like this one around the moon often have unusual shapes like this oval with bulging sides and top. Credit: Bob King

The exact same thing happens when light has to step around minute water droplets, pollen grains and our hairy aspen fluffs when they’re drift through the air overhead. Overlapping wavelets of light “interfere” with one another to form a series of colorful concentric circles called a solar corona. While the same in name, this corona is an earthly one unrelated to the huge, hot coronal atmosphere that surrounds our star.

Oil-coated water droplets show beautiful diffraction colors for the same reason soap bubbles do. Light reflecting from the bottom surface of the oil film interferes light reflecting from the top of the layer creating fringes of color. Credit: Bob King
Oil-coated water droplets also show beautiful diffraction colors for a similar reason as clouds and pollen do . Light reflecting from the bottom surface of the oil film interferes with light reflecting off the top of the layer to create shifting patterns of color. Credit: Bob King

The ones created by seed hairs and pollen require clear skies and a safe way to block the Sun’s overwhelming light. My filter of choice is the power pole mostly because they’re handy.  Sunglasses help to reduce the glare and eye-watering wincing.

While I can’t be 100% certain the chromatic bullseye was painted by poplar hair deflections – there’s always a chance pollen played a part – I’ve seen similar displays when the seeds have passed this way before.

Iridescent clouds are another form of a corona formed by minute water droplets diffracting light. Credit: Bob King
Iridescent clouds are another form of a corona formed by minute water droplets diffracting light. Credit: Bob King

Coronas created by water droplets in mid-level clouds are much more common, and the familiar “ring around the sun” or solar halo is an entirely different creature. Here, light is bent or refracted through billions of microscopic six-sided ice crystals.

I  figure that if the night is cloudy, the play of light and clouds in the daytime sky often makes for an enjoyable substitute.