Odd Radius Display Including 13° Halo, Vilnius, Lithuania 18th March 2023

The display occurred on 18 of March and I observed it from Vilnius, Lithuania.

For the whole day, cirrostratus clouds covered the entire sky. The clouds were moving eastward and also sublimating.

I started observing at 10:25 EET. At that time there were already odd radius halos present: with the naked eye, you could definitely notice both the 9° and 18° halos.

At 11:45, only the 9° halo was present, and at 12:00 the odd radius halos disappeared. After that, and until around 17:00, there were a faint 22° halo and tangent arc visible.

I photographed the halos in raw format with a DSLR camera. After enhancing the images, a 35° halo became visible, but I was surprised the most to see a ring between 9° and 18° halos, which appeared to be a 13° halo. After sending the images to The Halo Vault, I got a confirmation about this from Nicolas Lefaudeux and the Halo Vault team.

Here are some pictures from the display, last two of them in the sequence were processed by Nicolas Lefaudeux:

(All images copyright Donatas Gražulis)

(Image processed by Nicolas Lefaudeux)

(Image processed by Nicolas Lefaudeux)

A similar feature appears in an older photograph that I took on 25 of June 2019. This is the only photo from that day that this appears in; it was taken with a phone:

- Donatas Gražulis

A clear 28° halo on snow surface

Sunshine has been a rare phenomenon in Finland this winter. On 16th January, the sky was finally clear and temperature had dropped to -25°C, so I headed to a nearby lakeshore to observe possible surface halos. There were indeed 22° and 46° halos visible on the snow, so I took a set of 335 photos by moving back and forth of a 50 m stretch of a road along the lake. The mirrored stack revealed that this was an odd radius display with 18°, 20°, 23° and 24° halos present. An interesting feature was that 22° and 23° halos were equally strong and well defined in the stack.

Two days later I got another chance to photograph surface halos in the same place. The temperature was -8°C. Only a modest 22° halo with some bright glints outside it were visible to naked eye, so I did not expect much from the stack. Nevertheless, I took 147 photos. This time the mirrored stack looked even better than two days ago: a strong 22° halo accompanied by several odd radius halos, including a clear 28° ring.

A comparison with the previous display (limited by blue frame in the photograph below) provided another surprise: the prominent ”22° halo” was in fact a 23° halo and 22° halo was missing. So this was an odd radius display with 18°, 20°, 23°, 24°, 28°, 35° and 46° halos. Although there are not many observations of 28° halo on surface yet, it seems probable that it is not as rare as has been thought. This gives some hope that a crystal sample can be obtained one day.

The strong 23° halo and the absence of 22° halo in this surface display is interesting. It means that the usual ”22° halo” on snow may in some rare instances be something else than it looks, but it is not easy to detect such cases from the abundance of common 22° halos. For example, the first observation of surface 28° halo on 7 April 2012 by Jari Luomanen and Marko Riikonen looks rather similar as the current one, and it may perhaps contain 23° halo instead of 22° halo (yellow frame below, photo Jari Luomanen). Although all photos in this collage were taken with Samyang 8 mm fisheye lens, the result should be viewed with caution due to the robust alignment.

Odd radius display at low sun in Berkshire, UK

11-frame stack at sun elevation 2°: unsharp mask and colour enhancement (top), and background subtraction + blue-minus-red colour subtraction (bottom; the latter by Nicolas Lefaudeux).

In the evening of 24th May 2020, a notable display of odd-radius halos and their associated plate arcs occurred in Berkshire, UK. I first noticed faint traces of circular halos - 20° and 23° as I could later confirm from photos - at around 19:20 BST, when the sun was at 13° elevation. Less than 30 minutes later the sun had come down to 9° and first signs of the upper 20° plate arc appeared, making obvious the need to find a view down to the horizon. The display got weaker after some time but regained some intensity less than 30 minutes before the sunset. Unfortunately there were some lower-level cloud interfering with my view for most of the observing time.

Stacked and further processed images from the first stages of the display (below) reveal 18°, 20°, 23°, and 35° circular halos in addition to the aforementioned 20° plate arc. At the end of the display (above), the circular halos are less clear, but plate arcs at 20° and 35° show up better. Most interestingly, perhaps, there are suggestions of 28° circular halo and the associated plate arc at the upper left-hand side at solar elevations 7° and 2°. Previously 28° arcs have been reported in the Lascar display of 1997 and in a few more recent occasions in China, but possibly never before in Europe.

50-frame stacks at sun elevation 9° (top) and 7° (bottom): Background subtraction (left) and background subtraction + blue-minus-red colour subtraction (right).

Odd Radius Display, Southern Ohio, USA, 17th August 2019

On the evening of Saturday, 17th August 2019, I observed this complex pyramidal halo display. In total, I saw a faint 9d halo, lower 9d plate arc, bright 18d plate arc, 18d halo, upper and lower 24d plate arcs and a weak upper 23d plate arc. This display is very similar to the one I captured in 2017, the only difference being the one in 2017 the lower 9d plate arc was bright and colorful and in the present display it was weak.

Odd radii halos outbreak in the Czech Republic

There was an odd radii halos outbreak in the Czech Republic and Hungary in the past few days.
Multiple rare halo forms were captured.
Let me show you some of the photos:

These were taken by Jiří Kaňovský from Černotín, Czech Republic:

He managed to capture 9° contact arcs, 9° parhelion and 24° parhelion among others. Uppercave Parry was captured, too.

These were taken by me:

I am very confused about the halo forms captured here. First I thought I captured 18° parhelions, but now it turns out those are probabaly 20° and also 35° column arcs. There is also a faint lower 23° parhelion. 9° contact arcs are possibly captured, too.

The sun was 62° high at the point of the photoshoot.

I managed to stack multiple photos and edit those in Photoshop to bring out the halo forms.

Can anyone confirm that those are indeed column arcs?

Here are some .NEFs (Nikon's RAWs) if you're interested:

https://1drv.ms/u/s!ArJV0E31n7WMg0jl3Lh02eZjZy0p

Odd Radius Display, Bolton, United Kingdom

On the 5th April 2018, there was a short lived but rather nice odd radius display in Bolton, a town situated in the north west of the United Kingdom. As I was preparing to go to work, I noticed the top of what I initially took to be a 22d halo. However, it rapidly developed and became more complex and very soon an 18d became easily visible to the eye. The display lasted about thirty minutes in total and I was only able to take a few single shots and a couple of stacks before it began to fade and I had to leave. Upon processing the images, 9, 18, 23, 24 and 35d halos with attendant plate arcs were identified as being present.

Processing courtesy Nicolas Lefaudeux.

Odd radius plate display from the Czech Republic

On 4th March Jitka R. from the Czech republic captured this magnificent odd radius display on the Moon. After stacking multiple images, many halo forms showed up - particulary 9°, 18°, 20°, 24° and 35° halos, along with 9° and 24° plate arcs.

It was a case of sublimating cirrus, which could be easily seen on the satellite images.

And I have a question for the halo experts - is it possible that the 9° column arcs are captured, too? Or could it just be a cirrus of a higher quality?

Odd radius plate display in Czechia

On June 4th a cold front was advancing towards Czechia with thick Ci/Cs cloud cover ahead of the front.
Zbyněk Černoch was keeping an eye for any potential halos that might show up. As soon as the cloud cover started to sublimate (it was nicely visible on satellite imagery), bright pyramidal plate arcs showed up. The 23° parhelion is very easily distinguishable with its characteristic shape.

A few moments later, the 23° parhelion lost its initial shape, but became a little more coloured.

The same photos, with B-R processing:

Subvisual odd radius halos in the UK

In the afternoon of 26 March, 2017, I was spending time outdoors with my family and wasn't too well equipped for serious observing. Of course, I had paid some attention to cirrostratus clouds drifting in the sky, but most of the time I struggled to see any significant halos. There were just occasional patches of 22° halo: or at least that's what I thought they were. But then the upper suncave Parry arc appeared so I had no choice but to start photographing immediately. After all, you don't get Parry every week, and in fact this was my first such encounter in 2017. During the next 20 minutes or so, I took a decent set of photos, but then gave up as it appeared that the display had become insignificant again.

My hope was to find a few more halos in the post-processing, and stacking did a good job indeed. The stack shown above is from the first 50 frames and covers a total of 196 seconds. On the left the unsharp mask is applied on individual frames before stacking. The version in the middle is a gradient-subtracted average stack, which is further processed by using the blue-minus-red subtraction technique on the right. In addition to the usual stuff and the Parry arc, we can identify upper and middle Lowitz arcs as well as a short piece of helic arc to the left from the circumzenith arc. But that's not all - there are also odd radius circular halos.

For comparison, the stack below is from the last set of 30 frames that I took more than 30 minutes after the last signs of the Parry arc had disappeared. This stack covers a total of 174 seconds. I didn't really expect to find anything special at this point, but took the photos anyway out of curiosity. Apparently the odd radius stuff is still in play. My feeling is that it had been there all the time, possibly long before I noticed the Parry for the first time and also long after I had got indoors to celebrate the Mother's day dinner.

What is shown below is an attempt to make the scene as clear as possible by combining photos from two different series into one stack. 100 frames are included, covering 13 minutes in time but missing about six minutes in the middle. My interpretation is that the relatively typical pattern of 9°, 18°, 24°, and 35° halos is complemented by the exotic 13° halo. But I'm not sure and it would be great to hear what readers might think of the case. Whether the 20° halo is missing altogether or masked behind the suspiciously wide 18° halo, I am not sure of that either.

Odd radius halos with Wegener and subhelic arcs in the UK

A short-lived display of relatively high quality occurred in Berkshire, UK, in the morning of 4th March, 2017. A routine check at 9:35 local time suggested the presence of faint 18° and 23° parhelia, in addition to the usual 22° stuff, so I collected my camera, tripod and blocker and set up the system in a nearby park area. After just 25 minutes the display was all over, but there had been enough time to capture three 30-frame series for stacking.

In addition to the 18° and 23° parhelia, both visible to the eye during the display, the processed stacks suggest parts of 20° and 35° (and possibly 24°) circular halos. Unfortunately, the region of 9° halo is over-exposed in my photos. However, as far as my visually-based observations are to be trusted, there simply were no halos 9° from the Sun.


Given that we are dealing with a cirrus display here, I find the presence of both supralateral and infralateral arcs indicative of fairly ideal column crystals. This is confirmed by the side-view stack, as faint Wegener and subhelic arcs can be identified. The latter crosses the parhelic circle near the tall tree at the bottom. Just slightly further away from the Sun, there is a 120° parhelion too.

Parhelic circle mystery

Above are two stages of a display and they both have parhelic circle. I sort of understand the parhelic circle in the upper photo as there is passable parhelia (noting, however, that they have no horizontal extent). But it beats me that in the lower photo parhelic circle appears without parhelia. Below is full view of the latter situation in single 30 second exposure (the two images above are stacks of some 3 minute intervals). Photos were taken on the night of 12/13 December 2016 in Oikarainen, Rovaniemi. Some odd radius there too.

Odd radius display and its crystals

By Jarmo Moilanen and Marko Riikonen

This odd radius display appeared on the night of 17/18 January in Rovaniemi at -29° C. Visible is the usual duo of 9° and 35° halos, and also what seems like 18° halo.

Crystals were collected. It is hard to make sense of most of the crystals. Many seem to have pyramid faces, but obvious pyramids were very few in the sample.