The science behind natural optical phenomena—colors in the sky, rainbows, halos, coronas, iridescence, glories, glitter patterns and auroras—will be the topic of a free talk at Rochester Institute of ...

Optical illusions occur naturally in different habitats and conditions across the world. Cloud formations can sometimes make it seem like there's an ocean or a UFO in the sky. Whether it is salt flats ...

Every once in a while, you may look up towards the Sun and see strange bright lights on either side of it. Or perhaps you’ll be sitting in an aircraft, looking out the window at its shadow and see a ...

Earth's passage through the plane of Saturn's rings, occurring roughly every 15 years, causes the rings to appear nearly edge-on. The next such event in March 2025 will be poorly observable due to ...

A new study explores the behavior of photons, the elementary particles of light, as they encounter boundaries where material properties change rapidly over time. This research uncovers remarkable ...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A optical illusion appeared off the First Coast this week, making it seem as though a ship was hovering above and out of the water. The phenomenon, known as a superior mirage, ...

Plasmonics are special optical phenomena that are understood as interactions between light and matter and possess diverse shapes, material compositions, and symmetry-related behavior. The design of ...

Magneto-optical effects in plasmonic nanostructures represent an exciting frontier in the convergence of photonics, nanomagnetism and materials science. By harnessing the strong local electromagnetic ...

Everyone loves an optical illusion — even if they leave us completely stumped — and they're all around us in the natural world. From an underwater waterfall in the Indian Ocean to a surrealist scene ...