My parents took this photo today. Does anyone know what it is?

It looks like a Circumzenithal arc, but it’s got another rainbow.

Could it be a Kern arc? Those have only been seen 6 times.

More info on Flickr!

Update
Les from Atmospheric Optics tell me that the top half is a circumzenithal arc, and the bottom half is a "rare supralateral arc made by hexagonal column crystals"

Apparently seeing this is quite rare: "the combination of the two would be once a year or less"

Thanks again to Les for clearing this up

I know, I know, I take a lot of photos of spiders. I don’t particularly like them, they just make good subjects!

Almost all of the photos i’ve taken are hand-held, and most are quite sharp, showing the VR really does work. I’ve just bought a Manfrotto 679 monopod, which should make taking macro shots easier. Ebay has a number of these for less than £30.

I’ve been using it for a few days now, and I can honestly say it’s absolutely incredible! Not only are the optics excellent and the images incredibly crisp, but it can give a whole new insight into the world around you.

One of the first photos I took was of dew on an unopened orchid bud. When I viewed this later, I saw there were a number of ants underneath the bud. Me and my dad went back to take a few more photos, and saw they were ‘farming’ a number of aphids on the bud:

Later on, walking on the ridgeway, Rachel spotted an absolutely enormous bumblebee:

It was seriously the biggest i’ve ever seen. However, it was dead. And.. it looked a little odd. After taking a shot I zoomed in – to see a number of white mites sticking out of its fur. Eww.

Lichen were next. Through a macro lens they portay quite an alien landscape:

In the house, a rusty bar revealed delicate crytalline patterns:

A cauliflower up-close looks rather spikey:

The workmanship on this pocket watch is superb:

…and the minute spattering of dust and grease on my great-uncle’s pocket watch tells its own story:

Check out the rest of my 105mm shots on Flickr!

Buy your own from ebay.

Since I change lenses quite frequently, it was only going to be a matter of time until I got dust on the CCD. Somehow, while taking photos last weekend, I managed to get a huge particle stuck on my CCD which was so large it was visible in almost every photo I took! Nightmare!

Although I could spend time cloning it out on every photo, I don’t like to alter my photos other than tweaking them in Lightroom. It was clearly time to get my CCD cleaned.

There’s two options: Send it off for repair, or buy a product and clean it myself. Well, there’s obviously no fun in getting someone else to do it, so after a bit of research I bought a SensorKlear kit by LensPen. I didn’t fancy messing around with swabs and cleaning solution, so a dry solution like SensorKlear seemed ideal. Besides, their LensPens are excellent.

Before starting on cleaning the CCD, I decide it might be a rather good idea to see how other people fared when cleaning their sensor. I don’t want to go into this blind, and end up scratching the CCD or anything like that.
So, after reading a few anecdotes about the shutter breaking when randomly closing on the brush, and hence ending up with a very expensive paperweight, I’m wondering if this is a particularly bad decision. Well, I might as well see how bad my CCD is first. Perhaps I can live with it! So I take a photo:

Argh! It’s absolutely covered in dust and random bits of debris and bellybutton fluff!

There’s no way I can leave it like this, especially since I’m going to a friend’s wedding this evening, where I’m bound to take a few hundred photos of drunken people.. so I decide to throw caution to the wind and clean it. After all what could possibly go wrong?

After locking up the mirror, I start with the blower, with pretty good results. It removes the larger particles, but not all of the dust. It’s time to actually touch the CCD with the sensor cleaning pen. This is the scary bit.

With visions of the shutter closing on the pen and shattering the CCD into a thousand expensive pieces, I gingerly touch the CCD with the tip of the pen. Nothing breaks. Motivated by trepidation, I quickly move the pen over the CCD with the most gentle movement, before connecting the lens and taking another test shot.

It’s worse! Unbelievable! Somehow I’ve managed to get more crap all over the CCD. Unless I’ve damaged it..? Panicking I remove the lens, lock up the mirror and clean it with the pen again.  Ah. I had forgotten to use the blower after using the pen last time, which would explain why there was even more rubbish present.
Since using the blower means there’s no physical contact with the CCD, I give it a prolonged blasting. Another test shot reveals that the CCD is now almost clean:

Well, that’ll do for me. There’s a few spots that the pen might clear, but I think that’s enough for now.

My advice is, if you want to clean your CCD, try using a blower on it first. They’re pretty cheap, but make sure you get one that’s designed for use inside the camera. This means they have a filter, sometimes a rubberised tip, and don’t have any traces of oils inside that can be blown out and onto the CCD. Whatever you do DO NOT USE A CAN OF COMPRESSED AIR. If you’re brave enough, actually cleaning the CCD with a SensorKlear pen isn’t too scary.

Remember though – you may well be voiding your warranty if you try this. You could end up with an extremely expensive, unpractical, and unwanted paperweight!

I bought mine from eBay.

I love the Berkshire downs. It’s so peaceful, surrounded by nature, a million miles away from my daily life which is increasingly led by technology. It’s good to get away.

More photos of mine from the Berkshire Downs here. I even saw a Muntjac and a Water Vole

Aww. Little duckling at Arundel WWT. Lots more fluffy feathered things here