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Use the graphic and text found on following link to answer the questions below:

Atmospheric Optics - USA Today

1. What two things are needed to see a rainbow?

2. When sunlight enters a spherical droplet, it is broken into a spectrum of colors. What colors are bent/refracted the most? Which are bent the least?

3. What are parhelia? What is another more common term for parhelia?

4. Sunlight is bent at least how many degrees when passing through horizontally oriented ice crystals in a this cirrus cloud to make a sun dog?

5. When and where do sun pillars form?

6. How do sun pillars form?

7. When are halos most safely seen?

8. Are all cirrus clouds that produce halos associated with storm systems?

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What color is your cloud?

9. Do thick clouds reflect or absorb more light than this clouds?

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Mirages

10. Explain the optical difference between a superior mirage and an inferior mirage.

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Moon Halo

11. How is a halo around the moon formed?

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St. Elmo's Fire
12. What is St. Elmo's fire, and how does it form?

(more questions can be found below...)

Further explanations

EVEN Further explanations

Relative Humidity
13. Manipulate the variables in the interactive and answer the 5 questions found on the website.

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