One shows the remains of a dying star four thousand light years away which has thrown off a cloud of glowing hydrogen gas.
VOA: special.2009.09.30
Amateur video show by Russian television depicted a white streak of light like the cloud from a jetliner quickly expanding to a large white ball that eventually sent shock waves throughout the city of Chelyabinsk.
These are able to measure the spectrum of the light reflected from a cloud so accurately that Dr Rosenfeld could deduce the average size of its water droplets from the amount of light that they reflected.