This is a picture of two seperate ice halos. Ice halos are created by sunlight reflecing through ice crystals in the thin clouds high in the sky. It's kind of like rainbows, but with ice crystals rather than water droplets. The first halo, surrounding the sun, comes directly from the light of the sun and is created by hexagonal shaped ice crystals, but the halo surrounding the zenith of the sky comes from light reflecting through crystals with vertical faces. The picture was taken pointing straight up and encompasses about 180 degrees. It was taken by a Frenchman close to the Château de Chambord. How to look for sun halos: the halos are most easily seen when you shade the actual glare of the sun itself and instead look around the area surrounding the sun. The most common halos have a 22 degree radius, as the sun halo in our picture has.
No comments:
Post a Comment