The last time there were so few aeroplanes in the sky over Wigton was when the volcanic ash cloud grounded flights in 2011. It was then that I learned that the sky is naturally polarised in certain directions. When I say the sky, I mean the scattered light from nitrogen and oxygen molecules.
I stood with my shoulder lined up with the Sun. I took my polarising clips and rotated them. You'll notice that the picture below is darker than the one above. Hence the light coming in when I face this way is polarised. What struck me this time was that the polarisation was not horizontal and vertical. In the top picture, the clips were tilted to be along a line from the Sun to me.
Next I stood with my back to the Sun. You can just see my shadow to make the point.
Looking into the clip made no great difference, though in the pictures this might not be apparent because the bottom picture shows more of the sky. The closer you get to the zenith, the darker blue the sky appears.
