as small as a world and as large as alone

12:55am July 16, 2013

malformalady:

Brocken spectre, Tanzawa Mountains, Japan. A Brocken spectre is the apparently enormous and magnified shadow of an observer, cast upon the upper surfaces of clouds opposite the sun. The phenomenon can appear on any misty mountainside or cloud bank, or even from an aeroplane, 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 “spectre" appears when the sun shines from behind the observer, who is looking down from a ridge or peak into mist or fog. The light projects their shadow forward through the mist, often in an odd triangular shape due to perspective

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