Marble Terrace in early morning light. The sunrise this morning wasn't all that I was hoping for so I scurried down to the viewpoint for Marble Terrace and waiting for light to strike the terrace. For a few brief minutes it did, bathing the terrace in a soft warm glow before the sun disappeared behind the clouds again. The Mammoth Terraces are always changing. With deposition in some areas being measured at feet per year, the flow, texture, and patterns are different whenever I visit. The green near the bottom of the photo is from thermophilic (hot water loving) organisms. The organisms are photosynthetic (they use sunlight for energy) so in the wintertime, they darken to accomodate the decrease in light.
A big horn sheep poses briefly before going back to the work of eating the dry grass on the hillside in Lamar Valley. If you look closes at the tip of closest horn, you can see a small piece of juniper lodged in the end. Makes you wonder what the story is behind that.
I have always heard that the only waterfall in Yellowstone where you can see a moonbow is Dunanda Falls deep in the Bechler (southwest corner). After learning the basics of night photography, I got to wondering if that were really true. After doing some research and nearly a year of waiting, I put my theory to the test. This is the result. A moonbow on the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone. The bow didn't appear quite where I thought it would and it appeared later than I thought, but it appeared. I am now wondering if this is more common than we think. I'll have to do more research, and, of course, more photography. Moonbows are formed by the light of the moon (which is reflected sun light). The moon has to be bright (the days surrounding the full moon are best) and at the right angle (about 40 degrees above the horizon). Like their daytime counterparts, the light is refracted and reflected which breaks the light into its component colors. Moonbows appear as white arcs since the colored light is too faint to accivated the color cones in our eyes. Long exposure photography brings out the colors. Moonbows are also called Lunar Rainbows or White Rainbows.
