One of the photographs of the fog arc with the Brocken spectrum captured by the reader Emili Vilamala in Vilanova de Sau has been awarded the first prize in the FOTOMET 2024 competition, in the category of Meteorological Landscapes.
The award ceremony took place yesterday at the headquarters of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona. This is a competition called every year by the Catalan Association of Meteorological Observers and the photos presented must be from the previous year, on this occasion, from the year 2023.
“I captured the image on October 8, 2023 in the Sau Valley, it is an arc of fog with a Brocken spectrum,” explains Emili Vilamala, who has portrayed this phenomenon in several photographic reports in The Readers’ Photos of La Avant-garde, both in Vilanova de Sau and in other locations in Catalonia.
The first prize for Storms and Adverse Weather, the other category in which one could participate in this contest, went to Carlos Castillejo.
The Brocken spectrum has the colors of the rainbow but inverted, while the fog arc is white or with very weak colors and can form, as on this occasion, around the spectrum.
The reason why it is called the Brocken spectrum is found in Germany, where, as occurs in the Catalan region of Osona, frequent fogs occur on the Brocken, a peak of the Harz Mountains.
The Brocken specter was observed and described by Johann Silberschlag in 1780. And, since then, it has often been recorded in German literature when talking about, for example, the devil and witches.
