This grant supports travel funding for early career and/or underrepresented groups to attend the 11th Light and Color in Nature Conference. For 34 years, researchers have been gathering at approximately three-year intervals to share the latest results of their investigations into optical phenomena observed in nature. These meetings are truly special occasions where topics from rigorous mathematical theories of halo formation to the existence of rainbows in ancient Native American art are discussed. The topics addressed at these meetings include, but are not entirely limited to, the following: Rainbows, ice crystal halos, glories, coronas, iridescence, sky color, atmospheric visibility, refraction effects, contrast phenomena, noctilucent clouds, optics of lightning, auroras, colors created by absorption and scattering in water and air, color and light in water and on water surfaces, iridescence and colors in biology and geology. These meetings have been particularly successful at motivating archival research papers and popular articles, films, and books on the subject of optics in nature. Each meeting is followed by a Light and Color in the Open Air feature issue of the Journal of the Optical Society of America or Applied Optics.
The 11th Light and Color in Nature Conference was held from 5 through 8 August 2013 at the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, with welcoming remarks by the Director Robert McCoy. It was widely regarded as a successful meeting both regard to the scientific content and the cultural activities available to the participants in the Interior of Alaska. The National Foundation provided funds for the partial travel support of Graduate Students and early Faculty members from all over Alaska and the Lower 48. There were 16 Sessions involving 56 oral presentations (including 6 Invited talks), from a record-breaking total of 17 countries. (The entire Light & Color program Agenda can be seen at Lightandcolorinnature.org/2013-conference.) In addition, there were 2 Demonstrations of laboratory-type optical phenomenon simulations, including one evening gathering that was open to the public, highly attended by locals, and well covered by local television news networks. In addition to our more traditional topics (rainbows, halos, glories, coronas and iridescence, sky and cloud color, atmospheric visibility, refraction and contrast phenomena, color in water and air, astronomical optics, biological iridescence, and of particular concern to Alaska, auroras and noctilucent clouds), for the first time we also had a Forum that discussed in depth the growing impact of the use (and manipulation) of digital camera imagery in capturing atmospheric optical displays. According to our traditional "ethics", only phenomena that are visible to the unaided eye are to be considered, although this distinction is now clearly being bleared by digital imagery manipulation. A special issue of Applied Optics, a very popular feature of our meetings, is planned to present the findings that were discussed here in Fairbanks.
