Two Displays in Åre, Sweden 8th & 14th November 2021

We present a guest post by Minna Kinnunen showcasing two really nice displays she was fortunate enough to observe at the ski resort in Åre, Sweden. 

First display – 8 November 2021. 

The weather forecast promised a few degrees freezing and blue skies, but the only problem was that when I looked out the window in the morning, it was most definitely overcast with the clouds hanging low. Then it dawned on me that this could well depend on the altitude and/or the snow cannons working at full (with Åre being the biggest skiing resort in Sweden), and my experience in these conditions is that if I make my way up the mountain, the blue sky will appear. 

The circumzenithal arc was beautiful but the only way I could capture it with my 24mm lens was to take two horizontal photos and stitch them together in Photoshop to show the whole thing. Parhelia are strong, upper tangent arc and sunvex Parry are a bit fuzzy and there's even a faint Moilanen arc.

I drove to Ullådalen just outside Åre and sure enough, I saw some pale blue sky above me as I parked even though the landscape otherwise was still shrouded in fog/ice crystals. Early on in my hike I saw the halo, just a ring around the sun but exciting nonetheless! 

At this point the halo was at its absolute best, a very distinct display. Really a pity I couldn't capture it in its entirety with my 24mm lens.

The further out I got, the thinner the diamond dust and the clearer the halo. And then it wasn’t just the ring around the sun, it was another ring around the sun and it was a ring across the entire sky and it was pillars and it was arcs, quite simply the most stunning halo display I had ever seen. I really had no idea what I was looking at beyond “a halo” but I knew it was special for sure so I tried to shoot it the best I could, considering that I only had a 24-105 mm lens with me and 24 mm was barely enough to contain the 22° halo. 

All I could do was to attempt to capture the details. The pillar from the parhelion is very strong here, is it a Schulthess or Lowitz arc or something else?

Later in the afternoon but well before actual sunset the sun disappeared behind the mountain, but as a parting gift it gave me a beautiful display of upper and lower pillar, upper tangent arc and Parry sunvex. 

As the sun started to disappear behind the mountain, the upper tangent arc and Parry arc became clear. Even the helic arc is still visible.

Since I didn't know much about halos at this point, I thought the white pillar 120° from the sun was actually part of a fogbow. As I already have some nice pictures of fogbows, I didn't  shoot it until the very end as an afterthought when it had alsmost disappeared. The full 360° parhelic circle had been visible earlier.

I learned those names afterwards as I was studying my pictures and I also thought I identified the 46° halo, but it’s probably a supralateral arc? My biggest question mark however is the pillar going down from the parhelion, I am calling it “bisolpelare” in Swedish which is a direct translation of sun dog pillar, but maybe we’re really talking about a Schulthess or Lowitz arc? 

I got out of the mountain's shadow for a brief moment, the parhelion and parhelic circle are still very strong.

I made a short film on the trip https://youtu.be/PRT3Lf_WPFM, the footage gives more information than my still pictures. I made an attempt at naming all the halo components, I realise now that I’m probably wrong about a couple of them so I will need to update the video! 

Gear: 

- Sony A7C + 24-105/4

- Pictures are taken between 10.33 and 14.23 

- Sun at 8.52 degrees for the first picture and 4.74 for the last, 9.96 degrees at transit 

- Altitude for shown pictures 730-800 meters 

Second halo – 14 November 2021

This is the second halo as I started going up the piste. Amazing upper tangent arc and sunvex Parry with a fairly distinct suncave Parry. The supralateral arc is more colourful now than the last time.

Less than a week later the weather forecast once again promised cold weather and sunshine. Of course, I had to go back to Ullådalen to see if the proverbial lightning indeed strikes twice, but as I parked my car it didn’t look quite so good. I did see a stunning upper tangent arc and Parry arc though and now I actually knew what they were, having read about halos all week. 

A little bit higher up the diamond dust is very thin and just about all that remains are the spectacular arcs above the sun.

This time I went to the opposite direction from the earlier trip, up the piste towards the small peak of Rödkullen at the foot of the mountain of Åreskutan. The diamond dust that wasn’t very thick to begin with got thinner with every step and the halo faded with it. Up on Rödkullen the only hint of anything exciting going on was the rainbow colours I saw on the mountain side opposite the sun. 

The irridescent (?) fog opposite the sun.

Back by the car the halo became visible again. Since I now had a better idea of the halo types, I had a look around to see if I could find anything that I haven’t already seen. It didn’t look that good though so I figured that the show was over, time to go home. However, as I was driving down the road and the diamond dust got thicker, the halo made a glorious comeback. I tried to find some nice spots to shoot it, got too far down on the road and turned back. 

Going back up with the sun on my back, I saw it – the anthelion! I could barely contain myself, just jumped out of the car and shot it right there in the middle of the road. Which was just as well, because the anthelion turned out to be very short-lived, it only took a few minutes and it was all gone. 

What an unexpected and welcome sight, the anthelion and anthelic arc!

I drove the road up and down twice more without discovering anything new. Down the road the diamond dust was too thick and up it was too thin, the line in between was quite sharp. 

On my way home though I saw the halo by the Åresjön lake, so I took one more shot of the halo to cap off an absolutely amazing week of halos. 

On the opposite side of the anthelion, this halo.

The larger ring – be it 46° halo or supralateral arc – is white in the first halo but coloured in the second. Is it the same thing or a different type? 

Even a Tape arc made an appearance.

Gear: 

- Sony A6300 + 10-18/4 (15-27 mm effective) 

- Pictures are taken between 10.07 and 13.37 

- Sun at 5.86 degrees for the first picture and 5.81 for the last, 8.33 degrees at transit 

- Altitude for shown pictures 665-785 m. 

//Minna Kinnunen – vandrafotaleva.nu 

Update - 10th December 2021

When Minna's post was originally published, I was working on the assumption that we were dealing with a 120 pillar. However, after processing the image in several different ways, I noticed something unusual on either side of the pillar. I was fairly sure that the feature was real and not an artefact so I reached out to the halo community for suggestions as to what it might be.

'Mikkilä's soul'

Almost immediately Marko Riikonen recognised it for what it was, 'Mikkilä's soul' or Mikkilä's diffraction pillar. More details here,

https://www.atoptics.co.uk/fz742.htm

https://www.taivaanvahti.fi/observations/show/46324

Marko commented that whilst the diffraction pillar occurs reasonably frequently in spotlight displays, to the best of his knowledge, this is only the second time it has been observed in a solar display, the first being in Sotkamo, 2015. Minna checked her Photographers Ephemeris and further confirmed that the pillar was indeed located at the anthelic point.

Position of diffraction pillar as shown on Photographer's Ephemeris

Final irrefutable confirmation was provided by Nicholas Lefaudeux who has very kindly processed the image and managed to bring out the delicate coloured fringing of the phenomenon.

Processing by Nicolas Lefaudeux

As an amusing aside, when Minna was shooting the display, she didn't realise what the 'halo' she was seeing was and only took one photograph of it. Later during the editing process, she wasn't too impressed with the image and actually deleted it! However, on further reflection she rescued it from the trash and in so doing joined a very select club!


Alec Jones