Displays

Summer’s first hot weather spell started on 12 May in Finland, and along came solitary 23° plate arc. Yesterday it got warmer (+24°C) and also the halos got warmer. Odd radius column arcs! In addition to 9° and 24 column…

The phenomena began about 30 minutes before sunrise (which was at 5:58am local time) and faded completely about 30 minutes after sunrise. Apart from the main sun pillar you can see faint pillars to the left of the church and…

Last weekend, I visited my parents in Normandy. I took advantage of my visit to dig through my old astronomy journals of observations and pictures. I was looking for my records of what has been my best halo display. In…

Sometimes odd radius halos come day after another. In April 1987 I observed three consecutive days of odd radius halos and in April 1996 Jarmo Moilanen had four days in a row. On both periods there was also one night…

There are not much around photos of parhelic circle that fits inside the 22° halo. Here is one, seen over La Silla astronomical observatory in Chile on 27 January 1990. Sun is at 79 degrees elevation. Damien Hutsemekers, who took…

I would like to share some thoughts about a possible new arc. This arc seems to be present on the two observations of Moilanen arc at high source elevation from Jari Luomanen ( 1 ) and Marko Mikkilä ( 2…

Changing crystal shape causes surprising behavior with Liljequist parhelion, casting doubts on its identity as a halo form. Look at the simulations above, larger image opens by clicking. I have simulated (software: HaloPoint2.0) the anthelic side of the plate parhelic…

This reflection subsun was photographed on 21 April 2006 in Salt Lake City and has been on display in the Flickr since then ( 1 ). The photographer, Heron, correctly suspected that sun’s reflection from the Great Salt Lake might…

For a change a display from Africa. This was see in Accra, Ghana, on 10 March this year. The photo was taken by Kwaku Chintoh. Sun is at 75.5 degrees elevation. The two sun concentric halos are rather 9° column…

At last they are here: good photographs of Bottlinger’s rings! Tim Stone’s images of Bottlinger’s rings over Illinois were published today in Les Cowley’s site ( 1 ). The rings lasted only for a few seconds, but luckily Stone was…