066/366: Sky Full of Fire

I love a lot of things about our neighborhood, which is all pleasant tree-lined streets and stuff, but it's not a great place for taking pictures of sunset-- I pretty much need to get in the car to get to a place with a clear view of the western horizon. This knocks out a big category of imitation-Scalzi photos, but every now and then there's a cool sunset-related effect, like these clouds last night:

Red patches of cloud at sunset.

This is kind of similar to the sunrise squirrel from a few days ago, but the lit-up clouds are a little more sparse, which makes it more dramatic.

And, of course, this kind of photo is a great illustration of optical physics, as the red color is caused by Rayleigh scattering. The shorter wavelengths that would ordinarily make those clouds white were scattered off to the side to make blue skies for people west of us. Assuming they had clear skies, anyway; they may well have just been staring at grey and dismal clouds.

This was delayed to morning by the rotten cold I got from The Pip. His birthday is this weekend, so I went to bed early to conserve my strength for the social event of the season on Sunday. For the pre-school set, anyway...