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Peter Lowenstein
Mutare, Zimbabwe
02/15/2023
05:52 am

Equipment Details:

Hand-held Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS40 in sunset mode.

Post-processing Details:

Original slightly cropped to improve aspect ratio.

Image Details:

Golden Sunrise Stripe.
Due to an extraordinary combination of circumstances early in the morning on Wednesday 15th February, a narrow ‘letterbox’ sunrise over Machipanda in Mozambique projected a thin horizontal band of golden rising sunlight onto high ground for several kilometers along the opposite horizon in Mutare. This band of rising sunlight light was almost the same width as a layer of low cloud which was lingering near high ground after overnight rain and the resulting reflections produced a vivid orange stripe which stands out in stark contrast to unilluminated shadows above and below. This freak display which took place at about 6 am lasted less than five minutes and in many years of taking weather photographs I have never seen anything quite like this before.