119 pages of streetlight halos

The days are shortening and winter is coming soon. What a better way to get pumped for the upcoming diamond dust season than reading Walt Tape's 119 page treatment on spatial halos. New effects like superparhelic circle await for their discoverers. About half of the contents is the old stuff that you may have read already, but Walt has made some changes, so it is not bad idea to go through those parts as well.

Click on the image to go Walt's page to download it.

A mid-summer multihalo in Finland

This display was observed on 1 July 2009 in Tampere, Finland. The most prominent features were the bright upper tangent arc (contributing to a partial circumscribed halo) and the parhelic circle. A faint Wegener arc can be seen rising above the upper tangent arc. The sun elevation was 46 degrees. More photos on Jari Luomanen's website (1).

Odd radius halos 30 June, Finland

Halos were observed throughout Southern Finland. Above Jukka Ruoskanen's photo, click to go his site. Photos by others:

• Jari Luomanen


• Mika Aho


• Marko Riikonen

Odd radius rings from an airplane

Mónika Bodó photographed these odd radius halos on a flight from Amsterdam to Budapest on 20 June. The display lasted about 7-8 minutes and was observed during the descent to Budapest. Further photos are available in Mónika's album ( 1 ).

Odd radius display from the US

This photo of 18° and 23° rings and their arcs was shot by Michael Ellestad on 1 June 2009.

Short lived all sky display in Joensuu

This display was on when I woke up. It did not last long and was also plagued with lower clouds. I did not have mirror and could not see Wegener arcs, which are present in 3 minutes stack above.

Pyramid halos in Tampere, Finland

This display appeared today treacherously from behind Ac clouds. It did not last long, as Ac came to veil it again. 14 frames stack from 5 minutes.