You Learn Something New Every Day!

You learn something new every day, or at least you should try to do so and thereby increase your knowledge!

Crepuscular rays emanating from the view toward the sunset 

For me, that every day learning often comes in the form of a new word, one which intrigues me when reading a book or hearing someone speak.

In today's case, an Instagram post that contained a really interesting photo also came with a description of the "anticrepuscular clouds". What an awesome word! And with that I knew there would soon be some research involved, though the first thought was to break it down and figure it out by logic!

Being somewhat familiar with the root of the word ( check out my aprevious post "Watch Out For Wildlife") crepuscular refers to twilight, occuring either at dawn or dusk. In the case of the aforementioned post, crepuscular animals such as deer are those who are active in twilight.

With that in mind, crepuscular rays would logically be rays of light that occur sometime around "Twilight,( And I Don't Mean The Movie)". But anticrepuscular? Either it meant not near twilight, or maybe against twilight, perhaps? Now, off to the internet we go in search of more information.

As the diagram above shows, light from a low sun occuring sometime around twilight will be visible in the form of emanating rays when there are conditions that allow shadow, such as the presence of clouds or a mountain. In the case of the diagram, the perspective is looking toward the sun, which would be crepuscular rays, therefore looking away from the sun would be those anticrepuscular rays. 

If it makes it easier, think of a anticrepuscular rays being created in a simialr manner to a rainbow, with the sunlight refracting, reflecting or dispersing on water droplets on the opposite side of the location of the sun. 

Anticrepuscular rays emanating on the horizon opposite of the sunset

Anticrepuscular rays are essentially parallel, but appear to converge toward the antisolar point (the vanishing point) due to a visual illusion created by the linear perspective.