Sunday 30 April 2023

Odd radius display on sunset time, 2022-10-16 (Jouhe, France)

Often, when I see the clouds coming from west, I try to do a high cloud sunset to see if there is something to see (like sun pillar and sunvex halos).

this day, we had mosly contrails making here and there some ice halos from my position, but nothing unusual to catch the eye (furtive sundogs, 22° halos, upper tangent and maybe Lowitz buddies but too short in time to be exploitable) (Time-Lapse of part of the day in here, South-South-East Field of View). To find other halos at sunset, the exercice can be tricky, as the global backgroud turn progressivly to yellow then orange so the b-r rendering is more complicated, with adaptation to make in the last 30-45 mins before the end of sunset.
As I don't have automatized this, I find myself resigned to make one setting for the whole sequence to save time in my processings.
And sometimes, something catch my eye, as it did this last 16th of october, last year.
The three next images show 3 differents times of the event, with slightly different processings:

7
2022-10-16-[17h14à18h58]-NNW-bw-v1-[4-2]-UsM-(49)-5s5-histo-UsM-h20-h28?-h35


2022-10-16-[17h14à18h58]-NNW-bw-v2-[4-2]-UsM-(47)-7s7-UsM-histo


2022-10-16-[17h14à18h58]-NNW-bw-v2-[4-2]-UsM(56)-6s6-UsM-h28?-histo


If needed, I can provide the bw sequence, so you can see (as I do with VirtuaDub) the evolution of the display and distinguish the 28° halo with dynamic (back and forth) play on the sequence.

A sequence you will be able to see there (Version1 & Version2), but with the compression due to GoogleVideo. Again, all raw images are still in my possession, as I guess I might not be done with this display yet.

Friday 21 April 2023

Sharp Lowitz & Parry display, in short time [2023-04-04]

Here are some nice ice halos at the passage of a particular layer of clouds, during a clear sky day (2023-04-04, from near Dole, Jura, France). This clouds layers gave an extraodinary sharp looking display of ice halos, as I rarely saw in 15 years of watching. I was then in the good spot at the right time, for this one. While I was taking care of my lawn, during a clear sky day, I saw some high altitude clouds coming from the north, and decided to take the bet I will have some ice halos, but I did not epected that kind of sharp halos. In all the below images, clouds are coming from the left (North-East).
On this first stack image, you can see the Wegener arc, with almost the part crossing the parhelic circle. There is also the 120° parhelion with reddish edge as well as on the circle.
Process is (as an example of how I do usually, for the image shown above,
named 2023-04-04-[14h57to15h37]-bw-[4-2]-UsM(11)-5s5-notrack-UsM.bmp):
→ B-R ( -bw ) rendering of all the images of the sequence ( -[14h57to15h37] ),
→ 11th stack ( (11) ) of the sequence with 4 images ( -[4 ),
→ then Unsharp mask on this stack ( -UsM ),
→ then a new stack (with Registax, without the track on the sun ( -notrack ))
→ of 5 ( -5s5 ) of last stacks (those ones taken every 2 images ( -2] ))
→ then one more Unsharp filter ( -UsM ) to end it.
Later, like 5-6 minutes later, the layer of clouds enter the 46° FoV from the sun, which gave the most impressive part of the display to me.
Here is one single image, with just B-R rendering (no UsM or what so ever).
Then 2 stack versions witht this image along with some before and after, to see more clearly the Lowitz & Parry display, (on the above one, we can see parts of 46° halo, but not in whiole, because of the hole in the clouds crossing the view... I guess)
and with the images when the clouds are on the side of the sun from my point of view. I even manage to watch clearly the circumscribed halo while i was cutting my lawn.
You can also see the left part of lower Parry arc tangent with the circumscribed halo.
A last part of the display, with clouds on the bottom left of the sun, to see the extension of the lower Lowitz and the extension of the left part of the Lower Parry, tangent to the circumscribed halo.
For this stack, a "min" function is applied during the stacking process, in order to keep the minimum value of each pixel while stacking, and try to make the black forms therefore the colored halos more visible.
A crop on the left sundog, to see the Lowitz crossing and the 2 Parry arcs.

I have not presented any colored versions, because of the heterogeneous form of the clouds mask the halos for this display.

Finally, a time-lapse of the display is available here, which a compilation of differents time-lapses (one for each processing type). From those images are extracted the previous posted here :
www.flickr.com/photos/gaukouphoto/52808574767/in/dateposted/

All images are taken with Canon EoS 6D + 8mm Samyang lens from my roof windows, South-South-East side.
Settings: 1/1000s, ISO100, f/9,4, 1 image every 12s.
Sun mean height is 47° at the time of the sequence.

Google Drive folder shared, with all the images presented here, and the time-lapse.
I still have all the raws of the sequence if needed too.