When the sun shines through gaps in cloudcover, why do the rays splay or radiate outward?

Question

When the sun's rays reach earth, they're essentially parallel. And light doesn't bend (at least, not on the scale I'm referring to here). So when I look up at the sun shining through a hole in the cloudcover, how can it appear to be shining out from that point, going in all directions?

Answer 1

The outward splaying is from perspective on YOUR end, not on the Sun's. It's true, the rays are almost parallel since they are coming from 93 million miles away, but you are probably only one or two miles away from the mean distance to the clouds. Since the area covered by the speckled clouds is large compared to their distance from you, the pseudo-parallel light beams look like they are dramatically diverging. It's a very powerful illusion and I think it had a lot to do with early man's perception of the Sun (and by extension, all celestial objects) as being much closer to Earth than they really are.

Answer 2

Well the sun emits light from its entire surface. Since the sun is so much larger than the gaps in the clouds, you can think of these gaps as a pin hole camera. So your question can be asked like why does the image in the pinhole camera appear larger than the pin hole. Well light from the "edges" of the sun's "circle" (viewing it from the clouds gap) would approach the gap at a different angle and spread to the opposite side of the gap. Since this happens to light from all these edges the light would appear to spread.

Wal Zambia

Answer 3

the image voltaic is approximately midway by utilising utilising what's asserted as its important sequence degree, wherein stability is maintained by utilising utilising nuclear burning of hydrogen into helium in the middle. this technique has been taking place for about 4.6 billion years and and has approximately that comparable term to circulate. at the same time as the image voltaic does finally exhaust its furnish of hydrogen gas this is going to spice as much as type a purple huge and thereafter explode to type a planetary nebula, slightly like the ring or Dumbbell nebulae. It won't circulate nova or supernova because of the fact it would not have adequate mass.

Answer 4

Basically it's perspective. You're looking at essentially parallel beams from one end, kind of like standing in the middle of the road and seeing the edges of the road and the centerline converge in the distance. Only this is seeing them diverge as they come toward you, and in 3D it can be quite spectacular. This effect is sometimes called a "glory".

Answer 5

It's light reflecting off of the water molecules in the clouds.