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Abstract The glory, a striking optical phenomenon seen from space in unpolarized satellite images can be mapped onto the cloud's droplet sizes with a characteristic scale of 10. Such a mapping allows us to infer the mean and variance of the cloud droplets' radius, an important property that has remained elusive and inaccessible to passive unpolarized satellite sensing. Here, we propose a simple and robust polarization‐like differential approach to map the glory's spectral properties to the desired moments of the droplet size distribution. By taking the differences between two spectrally close channels, we reduce multiple scattering contributions and amplify the single‐scattering signal, thus allowing for a simple and rapidly converging map from glory to droplet size distribution. Moreover, the droplet information reflects the upper part of the cloud, adding another sample to the traditional multiple scattering‐based retrievals that reflect droplet properties deeper in the cloud. 

Abstract Glory is a beautiful optical phenomenon observed in an atmosphere as concentric colored rings reflected by clouds or fog around an antisolar point. Here we report that true color glories, although faint, are discernible in raw unpolarized satellite images by a naked eye on a daily basis, thus constituting a large and untapped reservoir of cloud data for which a simple diffraction-like approximation links cloud droplet diameter and variance to the glory’s structure.