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Last night on Skye I had the joyful experience of walking alongside my fairy shadow in the mist!
Last night on Skye I had the joyful experience of walking alongside my fairy shadow in the mist! @neilhimself told me it’s a Brocken spectre - do google them they’re v cool! Skye, what a magical place I’m homesick already!
Link to tweet
A Brocken spectre (German: Brockengespenst), also called Brocken bow, mountain spectre, or spectre of the Brocken is the magnified (and apparently enormous) shadow of an observer cast in mid air upon any type of cloud opposite to a strong light source. Additionally if the cloud consists of water droplets backscattered a bright area called heiligenschein and halo-like rings of rainbow coloured light called a glory can be seen around the head or apperature silhouette of the spectre. Typically the spectre appears in sunlight opposite to the Sun's direction at the antisolar point.
The phenomenon can appear on any misty mountainside, cloud bank, or from an airplane, but the frequent fogs and low-altitude accessibility of the Brocken, a peak in the Harz Mountains in Germany, have created a local legend from which the phenomenon draws its name. The Brocken spectre was observed and described by Johann Silberschlag in 1780, and has since been recorded often in literature about the region.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brocken_spectre
The phenomenon can appear on any misty mountainside, cloud bank, or from an airplane, but the frequent fogs and low-altitude accessibility of the Brocken, a peak in the Harz Mountains in Germany, have created a local legend from which the phenomenon draws its name. The Brocken spectre was observed and described by Johann Silberschlag in 1780, and has since been recorded often in literature about the region.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brocken_spectre