Faint yet widespread glories reflect microphysics of marine clouds

Abstract

Abstract Glory is a beautiful optical phenomenon observed in an atmosphere as concentric colored rings reflected by clouds or fog around an antisolar point. Here we report that true color glories, although faint, are discernible in raw unpolarized satellite images by a naked eye on a daily basis, thus constituting a large and untapped reservoir of cloud data for which a simple diffraction-like approximation links cloud droplet diameter and variance to the glory’s structure.