Glory is a rare phenomenon. The visual effect is a circular rainbow around your shadow. In East Asia, the effect is known as “Buddha’s light”, which just goes to show how impressive this phenomenon really looks. While it may not look like much in the photos, I can confirm from experience that it is a truly glorious effect. Having a circular rainbow of light perfectly centered on your shadow makes you feel like the center of the world for just a few moments. It looks like a halo of rainbow light perfectly placed upon your shadow’s head and carries the magic you’d imagine with that sight. The beauty is compounded when you’re standing on a summit or peak and it feels like you’ve conquered the world.

Above: A glory in the fog below observation hill. The shadow is observation hill with a small figure (myself) at the summit, with a glory surrounding my shadow. The edge of town is visible on the right and the melting sea ice can be seen through the fog.

Interestingly, there doesn’t seem to be a complete, agreed upon explanation for glory. Numerous theories have been proposed but some of them conflict or are incomplete. We can be reasonably sure that it is an effect caused by the backscattering of light from water droplets, but beyond that things get much more complicated. The best explanation I can provide is that it requires a set of water droplets below you (fog or a cloud) and the sun behind you. The droplets below you backscatter the light from the sun back towards you. It commonly occurs in planes (flying above clouds) or on mountaintops (above a cloud or fog layer). Glory is a different effect to fogbows, which will be covered in a different blog post. I saw a glory here at McMurdo while hiking observation hill. I hope to see more, and perhaps someday I’ll be able to elaborate on the simple explanation I’ve given here.

Above: Another image of the same glory. I couldn’t capture it as vividly as it seemed in the moment but it’s clearly visible.