Halos 20. May

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In the afternoon the clouds came. Parhelion was blindingly bright. I followed as the same cloud reached the 120° parhelion position and there was an intensity increase which soon attenuated. The last image shows two photos taken 88 seconds apart, the 120° parhelion is seen in the left photo, in the right photo the cloud has already moved further and the distant parhelion is no more seen. I think the best part of the cloud did not pass the 120° parhelion location, or it would have been brighter.

Day's halos:

• 22° upper tangent arc


• 22° halo (just a small patch in the second photo)


• parhelia


• pillar


• circumznith arc


• 120° parhelion

Sun pillar in Stratocumulus virga (and an attempt of fake sun), 1. May

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In the spring, when there is a break of cold air from north and snow showers develop in the daytime, it is good chances for sun pillar in the evening. This is because the snowing cumulonimbus start losing their power and reduce to stratocumulus with icy virga. And the virga of low and middle level clouds often consists of crystals that make decent pillars.

This is what happened on 1. May in Tampere. Above are some photos from the evening. There was also an attempt of fake sun, but for my criteria it was not quite there yet. These low sun pillars and fake suns are difficult to photograph because of the clipping of red. The fifth image (small thumbnail on the right) is a series of the fake sun attempt: the pillar below the sun in the beginning of the series was blindingly bright, even though I was watching with sun glasses (you need welding glass to observe these properly). In the end of the series the true sun is coming visible. The photos were given lowest white balance value possible and highest recovery value in Photoshop. That's how red clipping was gotten rid of. The downside for this realism is unrealistical blue photos. The leftside photo in the gallery on the second row is the same as the first in the blue series, but with more normal white balance values. There is red clipping that masks the true nature of the pillar / fake sun effect.

Faint odd radius halos

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Now here is an example of a display where you see nothing special visually. Just a faint 22° halo that is a bit brighter from the top. But there was one visual clue, however, that revealed it might be an odd radius display. It was the broadness of the 22° halo. And indeed, in the photos 9° halo is seen as well as 18/20° halo. The outer halo might not contain 22° halo at all, rather, it can be 23/24° halo.

Had I had a convex mirror, the 9° halo would certainly have showed up with it, also the 18/20° halo. The two photos above are versions of one. They are 2 minutes stacks. The date is 28 April 2011.

The display just continued and one could have gotten several hours stack of it. When in the afternoon 9° halo was visible to the naked eye, I took another stack in the middle of tyre changing. The third image has 7 frames taken during about 2 minutes. There is 35° halo (arrow), it is seen also in single images, which means it would have been observable with convex mirror.  Fourth image is a bit longer stack. Now the 35° halo is on the other side.

Non-spotted Wegener arc

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Not seeing a colored Wegener when it is there can hollow a halo man up. Just that's what happened today. There was a nice little display little in cirrus and I found Wegener from the photos afterwards. It is actually rather typical for me to not see them.  Curious incidence was that I took a panorama of the same clouds earlier when they were closer to horison and not yet at halo making distance. I did not expect them to show anything special.

Hugin is good now for halo panoramas as it gives 16 bit output. I put here also two different projections of the cirrus cloud panorama. The first is cylindrical and sencond is rectililnear. The rectilinear represents the clouds more like they appeared to the eye, being straight stripes.

Lunar diamond dust halo display in Rovaniemi, 7/8 December 2008

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Before the moon halos appeared, diamond dust was so thick that moon did not shine through and I photographed in spotlight beam. As the the diamond dust started thinning, it also lifted up from the ground - there were not much crystals on the ground. The moon elevation is about 30 degrees judging from the circumzenith arc which is slightly separated from the 46 halo.

South Pole odd radius halo display 6 February 1999

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This was a long lasting display with faint odd radius halos. The scanned slides here only show 9° stuff, but there was more, also the 20° and 24° halos. The crystal orientatation is poorly column oriented as the 9° halo is slightly brighter on the sides. And indeed, in the crystal photos we took with Jarmo Moilanen there were columnar pyramids.

South Pole halos 5 February 1999

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Basic display at South Pole. The third image is taken by Jarmo Moilanen. The last two images show a contrail display.