I was visited by Iris, the goddess of the rainbow, who, just like in Greek times, acted as a messenger of the gods. That’s how it came to be that when I looked out a picture window there were ribbons of glowing blue-green, pink and violet in clouds that had appeared above the hills to the southwest. It was around 3 o’clock in the afternoon during the first week of February and the sun had disappeared below those hills. I gazed at the two distinct bands of shimmering colors, one set above the other, with pleasure; they were like the mother of pearl inside an abalone shell.
Dave Walker in the UK caught another iridescent cloud on April 25,2013. He wrote, “There’s been a lot of very high cloud recently, always a cue for me to look out for more atmospheric optics.
Astronomer Bob Berman keyed out my description, “If the sun was still up, and the mother of pearl was on the edges of white clouds, or suffused among high altitude clouds, then you were seeing Cloud Iridescence. I love that phenom, it’s gorgeous, and is a diffraction…..phenomenon.”
According to Deborah Byrd “You might on occasion see a rainbow-like cloud. They are fairly rare. They’re caused by the presence of tiny ice crystals or water droplets in the air, which cause light to be diffracted or spread out.”
Valentine’s Day is, roughly, a mid-season marker, tilted towards the promise of spring by ten days. On the 14th, with a Valentine of any age, head outdoors to find the red star that appears above and to the left of a crisp half moon (first quarter moon is at 2:46 a.m. on the 15th.)
The star, a red giant sun, is Aldebaran, the eye of Taurus the Bull. Moon and star are visible in the south about an hour after sunset and may be seen setting in the west around midnight. The waxing moon (increasing in size) appears close to Aldebaran on the 15th and 16th, too.
It shows the view of Mars through a telescope in 2016. We pass between Mars and the sun on May 22. We won’t see Mars as a disk like this with the eye alone. But, between the start of 2016 and May, the dot of light that is Mars will grow dramatically brighter and redder in our night sky. Watch for it!
The dynamism of the pre-dawn and dawn sky continues from southeast to southwest, although the quintet of planets will soon be diminished by one. The last days to see Mercury with the naked eye may be the 12th and 13th, when Venus and Mercury will be closest to each other. Mercury does rise later and is increasing in magnitude but the little planet is losing altitude and, combined with the sun’s earlier rising, is difficult to see. Bring binoculars. Venus, the next planet to leave the five now visible, will shine in the sunrise glow until the end of March. It is Mars that intrigues us now, as the red planet brightens steadily until May 22.