Abstract

Mirages, rainbows, halos, glories, and coronas are well-known atmospheric optics phenomena that can be used as examples when teaching the well-understood underlying optical principles of refraction, reflection, dispersion, diffraction, and scattering. These beautiful natural phenomena can generate interest when used for teaching optics because they usually are easily observable with the naked eye. The invention of Si-sensor-based digital photography, however, also offers easy investigations in spectral regions adjacent to the visible range. We report and discuss observations of natural phenomena with a modified DSLR camera operating in the near infrared spectral range above 800 nm. This investigation may be particularly useful in photonics education, as the discussion of photon detectors in certain wavelength ranges can be combined with atmospheric optics, which always attracts interest in students.

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