Optics questions

“Camera” means “chamber” and “room” in Latin. Camera obscura was an optical device used in drawing, and an ancestor of modern photography. This is a source of the modern word camera.

Higher ISO settings allow shorter shutter speeds, which is often desirable as it reduces photo blur caused by camera movement. However, higher ISO also means more noise.

Mantis shrimps, or stomatopods, are marine crustaceans of the order Stomatopoda. They are thought to have the most complex eyes in the animal kingdom and have the most complex visual system ever discovered. Compared to the three types of photoreceptor cells that humans possess in their eyes, the eyes of a mantis shrimp have between 12 and 16 types of photoreceptors cells. Furthermore, some of these shrimp can tune the sensitivity of their long-wavelength colour vision to adapt to their environment.

A Satellite flare (also called a Iridium flares ) is a phenomenon caused by man-made satellite where the sunlight is reflected back to Earth. This results in a quick and bright "flare." Some flares can be up to 20 times brighter than Venus. These can be very bright. So much so, that it can even be seen during the day.

There are two illusions associated with the Ames Room. First the room appears cubic when viewed monocularly from a special viewing point (the true shape of the room is trapezoidal). Secondly, within an Ames Room people or objects can appear to grow or shrink when moving from one corner to the other.

A rainbow is a meteorological phenomenon that is caused by reflection, refraction and dispersion of light in water droplets resulting in a spectrum of light appearing in the sky. It takes the form of a multicoloured circular arc. Rainbows caused by sunlight always appear in the section of sky directly opposite the sun.

The Fata Morgana occurs because rays of light are bent when they pass through air layers of different temperatures in a steep thermal inversion, where an atmospheric duct has formed. It significantly distorts the object on which it is based, often such that the object is completely unrecognizable. The Fata Morgana may be seen on land or at sea, in polar regions, or in deserts. It may involve almost any kind of distant objects, including boats, islands, and the coastline.

A Brocken spectre or mountain spectre, is the apparently enormous and magnified shadow of an observer, cast upon the surfaces of clouds opposite the sun. The head of the figure is often surrounded by the glowing halo-like rings of a glory—rings of coloured light that appear directly opposite the sun when sunlight meets a cloud of uniformly-sized water droplets. The phenomenon can appear on any misty mountainside or cloud bank.

Halo is the name for a family of optical phenomena produced by light interacting with ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere. Halos can have many forms, ranging from colored or white rings to arcs and spots in the sky. Among the best known halo types are the circular halo (properly called the 22° halo), Other common optical phenomena involving water droplets rather than ice crystals include the glory and the rainbow.

The effect is similar to irisation. Iridescent clouds are a diffraction phenomenon caused by small water droplets or small ice crystals individually scattering light. Larger ice crystals do not produce iridescence, but can cause halos, a different phenomenon.