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What is a Brocken Spectre?

How did we choose the name of our publishing company?  A Brocken Spectre (sometimes called an anthelion) is a beautiful meteorological phenomenon consisting of the observer’s shadow with its head completely surrounded by a rainbow.  It is often seen beneath them by mountaineers climbing out through the top of a cloud layer.  

The Sun casts their shadow on the clouds and the moisture in them diffuses the light into brilliantly-coloured rings or haloes.  The author of King of Siluria and Strata has frequently seen the phenomenon from an aircraft flying just above a cloud layer.  The name derives from the mountain called Brocken in the Harz range in Germany.  The subject of King of Siluria, Roderick Murchison, climbed it in 1828 and again in 1854 (his sixty-third year), in search of fossil beds older than the lowest Devonian.

Example of a Brocken Spectre round a person

Example of a Brocken Spectre viewed from an aircraft

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