Monday, July 8, 2019

Halos Revisited

In this post I claimed that I had seen  22° and Circumscribed Halos.

I was wrong.

What I saw was much cooler.


I sent my images to Les Cowley, who maintains the Atmospheric Optics site, and he was kind enough to write back and label one of the images as shown above. He noted in the email, "You have captured a rare display of halos generated by partially oriented pyramidal crystals."

Dr. Cowley continued:

Most pyramidal ice crystals tumble and are effectively random oriented.  These for the 'odd radius' circular halos:

Some pyramids can get oriented and they produce blurred patches of light or arcs - 'parhelia'.   You have 18 and 23 degree ones

And we now know why I thought it was one of the most impressive displays I'd ever seen.

Thanks to Dr. Les Cowley for taking the time to label the image, provide links, and explain what it was I saw and photographed.

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