Ice Crystal Halos

Bottlinger’s rings from a Beijing – Singapore flight

Bottlinger’s rings from a Beijing – Singapore flight

The photo on the right, and another one ( 1 ) were taken on an airplane from Beijing to Singapore on 3 January. The Bottlinger Rings appeared two times in total, when the plane flew above patches of dissipating AC clouds. I only managed to capture the first appearance. When the rings appeared, the subsun was glaring, and I got a feeling of the ring swelling and shrinking as the cloud moved, but I guessed it was only an illusion.

Text: Jia Hao

8 comments

  • Jia the expanding and shrinking of the ellipse was no illusion. I saw it myself last year during an elliptical halo display that lasted over two hours. I layed on the ground taking a photo every few seconds and when I paged through them I could see the ellipse shrink and get large when a dissipating AC would form into large ellipse then shrink again. There were at times three ellipses. I pretty much time lapsed the display

    Congrads on a rare catch.

    Reply
  • Now Bottlinger is a truly rare halo. Spotlights seem to be useless in creating them – and elliptical halos for that matter.

    On the other hand, maybe we should start to pay more attention to those diamond dust (lamp) displays that make only pillars. Perhaps in some of them elliptical halos and Bottlingers are to be found. Especially promising could be situations where there is a light snowfall from clouds above. Two or so observations of elliptical halos have been made also in pure diamond dust.

    Reply
  • I just need to get help on how to use the microsoft moviemaker to put all the frames into a movie and then when I get access to hi-speed internet I will open an account on Youtube and post it.

    Reply

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