Stephen James O'Meara's Secret Sky: Readers search for shadow bands

February 2010: I share some of my readers' encounters with elusive shadow bands.

Contributed by Stephen James O'Meara

Published: December 28, 2009

Shadow bands, artificially shown in this composite photo of an Egyptian backdrop, normally appear faintly on the ground and can be difficult for even advanced observers to spot.

Photo by Stephen James O’Meara

In the March and April 2009 issues, I wrote about the mysterious and fascinating forms of shadow bands, which are visible any day (under the right conditions) without a total solar eclipse. Given the response to these articles, non-eclipse shadow bands appear to be a popular subject among Astronomy readers as well. Here is a diverse sampling of the reports.

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