Brocken Spectre

My shadow forming a Brocken Spectre

So Saturday wasn't just a brilliant reunion with old friends we witnessed a rare meteorological phenomena. It's called a Brocken Spectre and you see them if the conditions are just right. You need the sun behind you shining on to fog or cloud which is to the front and below of you. Then what happens is you shadow is projected onto the fog looking huge and not only that but your shadow has a rainbow halo around it.

The photograph above is of the one I saw when walking on the white horse at Uffington. I suitably spooky place to see one. Apparently in the past climbers would be terrified by seeing them. They're named after a mountain in Germany where sightings of them are common.

I sent my picture to the Met Office when they tweeted about fog this week and they sent me this information about them. There's also a great story about a sighting of one in the 19th century in Scotland. I wonder if these Brocken Spectres could have fuelled the Abominable snowman myth in mountain ranges?

Getting my photograph was difficult as my camera did not, in fact could not, focus on the fog. I had to set it to manual focus and force the camera to focus on the ground just before the drop. For us standing on the hill side the Brocken Spectre's halo was very obvious but as always not so much when you look back at the photograph. So I had to mess around with the saturation of the photo and bring down the white. But it's probably as good as I was going to get.