Optical phenomenon in the context of "Mirror image"

Airglow is a faint emission of light by a planetary atmosphere. In the case of Earth's atmosphere, this optical phenomenon causes the night sky never to be completely dark, even after the effects of starlight and diffused sunlight from the far side are removed. This phenomenon originates with self-illuminated gases and has no relationship with Earth's magnetism or sunspot activity, causing aurorae.

Airglow occurs in two forms, as a result of a pair of interlinked but different processes. Dayglow occurs during the day and is caused by the splitting of atmospheric molecules but is too faint to be seen in daylight. During the night airglow occurs as nightglow, when the molecules split during daytime recombine.

A rainbow is an optical phenomenon caused by refraction, internal reflection and dispersion of light in water droplets resulting in a continuous spectrum of light appearing in the sky. The rainbow takes the form of a multicoloured circular arc. Rainbows caused by sunlight always appear in the section of sky directly opposite the sun. Rainbows can be caused by many forms of airborne water. These include not only rain, but also mist, spray, and airborne dew.

Rainbows can be full circles. However, the observer typically sees only an arc formed by illuminated droplets above the ground, and centred on a line from the Sun to the observer's eye.

In meteorology, an afterglow is an optical phenomenon, generally referring to a broad arch of whitish or pinkish sunlight in the twilight sky after sunset, consisting of purple light and bright segment. It consists of several atmospheric optical phenomena. The purple light mainly occurs when the Sun is 2–6° below the horizon, during civil twilight (from sunset to civil dusk), while the bright segment lasts until the end of the nautical twilight. Similarly, a foreglow is a broad arch of whitish or pinkish sunlight in the twilight sky before sunrise, consisting of purple light and bright segment.

Afterglow is often seen in volcanic eruptions, in which the purple light might also be called volcanic purple light. In volcanic occurrences specifically, the light is scattered by fine particulates, like dust, suspended in the atmosphere. Afterglow may refer to the golden-red glowing light from the sunset and sunrise reflected in the sky in alpenglow (similar to the Belt of Venus) and in particularly for its last stage, when the purple light is reflected.

A phosphor is a substance that exhibits the phenomenon of luminescence; it emits light when exposed to some type of radiant energy. The term is used both for fluorescent or phosphorescent substances which glow on exposure to ultraviolet or visible light, and cathodoluminescent substances which glow when struck by an electron beam (cathode rays) in a cathode-ray tube.

When a phosphor is exposed to radiation, the orbital electrons in its molecules are excited to a higher energy level; when they return to their former level they emit the energy as light of a certain color. Phosphors can be classified into two categories: fluorescent substances which emit the energy immediately and stop glowing when the exciting radiation is turned off, and phosphorescent substances which emit the energy after a delay, so they keep glowing after the radiation is turned off, decaying in brightness over a period of milliseconds to days.

Birefringence, also called double refraction, is the optical property of a material having a refractive index that depends on the polarization and propagation direction of light. These optically anisotropic materials are described as birefringent or birefractive. The birefringence is often quantified as the maximum difference between refractive indices exhibited by the material. Crystals with non-cubic crystal structures are often birefringent, as are plastics under mechanical stress.

Birefringence is responsible for the phenomenon of double refraction whereby a ray of light, when incident upon a birefringent material, is split by polarization into two rays taking slightly different paths. This effect was first described by Danish scientist Rasmus Bartholin in 1669, who observed it in Iceland spar (calcite) crystals which have one of the strongest birefringences. In the 19th century Augustin-Jean Fresnel described the phenomenon in terms of polarization, understanding light as a wave with field components in transverse polarization (perpendicular to the direction of the wave vector).