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| Jupiter Corona from Iran Mahdi Zamani captured this stunning starscape. "I spent November 2012 in the middle Mesr desert in central Iran to capture the phases of the moon for a lunar atlas book. During this period I could capture some atmospheric phenomena. Here's a picture of Jupiter near its opposition surrounded by a corona." ©Mahdi Zamani, shown with permission. |
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| Small water droplets are no respecters of light sources. They will form a ringed corona around the sun, the moon, Venus, Jupiter and all the stars. Long exposures and steady cloud/haze conditions would be needed to capture the rings of the latter. Light is scattered mainly by the periphery of the droplets. The individual outgoing spherical wave trains combine constructively or destructively to give the coronal diffraction pattern |
| Aureoles around Jupiter and Venus are increasingly photographed but a ringed corona is unusual. It speaks of water droplets of almost all the same size diffracting the Jovian rays, The orange giant star, Aldebaran, has an aureole and longer exposures could possibly reveal a coronal ring. The blue-violet nebulosity around the Pleiades is not of our atmosphere. It is the harsh light of very hot cluster stars scattered by surrounding dust If the dust was of uniform size and shape we might see a corona. Somewhere in the Universe that will happen. |
