October 2, 2026 | Raytown, Missouri
Yesterday, the sky seemed determined to fill every inch of itself. Rain, heavy gray layers, changing shapes, and clouds that kept rearranging themselves faster than I could photograph them.
This morning felt almost like waking up in a different season of the sky.
8:45 AM | Blue, With a Moon Left Behind
When I stepped outside at 8:45, there were blue skies as far as I could see. No dramatic cloud formations competing for attention. No dark ceiling pressing down. Just an enormous stretch of blue and, still hanging there in daylight, the Moon.
I always love seeing the Moon during the day. There is something wonderfully ordinary and strange about it at the same time. We tend to assign the Moon to nighttime, yet there it was in the bright morning, perfectly visible and apparently unconcerned with our schedules.
The wider view made the change from yesterday even more striking. After spending a rainy day watching clouds twist, thicken, lower, and soften into rain, this sky seemed almost empty.
But empty is not the same thing as having nothing to see.
3:18 PM | The Fire Eye
By afternoon, the blue remained. At 3:18 I pointed my camera toward the Sun, snapped a photograph without even looking at the screen because it was far too bright, and discovered something completely unexpected afterward.
It looked like an eye made of fire.
Color seemed to radiate outward from the brilliant white center in rings and streaks of green, pink, violet, blue, and gold. I had not added a filter or effect. The camera created the strange rainbow pattern while trying to photograph an overwhelmingly bright light source.
I think that is part of what makes photography so much fun. Sometimes I photograph exactly what I meant to capture. Other times the camera hands something back that I never knew I had taken.
7:15 PM | The Color Returns
By 7:15, the hard blue of the day had begun to soften. Above the darkening trees, the sky faded through pale blue into a warm wash of yellow near the horizon.
There still wasn’t much in the way of clouds, but by then I had stopped thinking of the sky as empty. The Moon had been there in the morning. The Sun had turned my camera into a tiny prism in the afternoon. Now evening was painting its own color across the horizon.
Maybe the sky never really runs out of things to show us. Maybe sometimes it simply changes the subject.
š Cloud Notes
Unlike October 1, today’s photographs show an essentially cloud-free sky during the observations I made. The daytime Moon at 8:45 AM is completely normal. The Moon is above the horizon during daylight for substantial portions of each month, although blue-sky brightness can make it less noticeable.
The colorful pattern surrounding the Sun in the 3:18 PM photograph should not be interpreted as a solar halo, corona, or other atmospheric optical phenomenon. With no visible cloud layer around the Sun and with the intense light directed straight into the phone camera, the rainbow-like rays and rings are best understood as a camera-generated optical artifact produced while imaging the very bright Sun. The photograph itself was taken without an added filter or editing effect.
One small safety note for fellow sky-watchers: photographing the Sun by pointing the camera without looking directly at it was the right instinct. Never stare directly at the Sun through a camera viewfinder, binoculars, telescope, or with the unaided eye.
š A Thought to Carry With You
We sometimes mistake fullness for interest.
We expect the memorable days to arrive crowded with things happening, while the simpler ones slip past almost unnoticed.
But today the sky offered almost nothing except blue, and somehow there was still a Moon in the morning, a fire eye in the afternoon, and gold waiting at the edge of evening.
Maybe a day doesn’t have to be full to contain something worth remembering.
š· Photography & Cloud Identification Disclaimer
Cloud and atmospheric observations in The Curious Cloud Journal are based on photographs and what I observed at the time they were taken. Cloud identification from photographs is not always exact, and descriptions are intended as careful observations rather than official meteorological reports.
Ā© 2026 The Curious Cloud Journal. All photographs and original writing are my own and may not be copied, reproduced, or used without permission.
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