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.

Snow gun generated column display

On the night of 15th November 2016 (the night of the "supermoon") I was out of the city photographing the full Moon. The humidity was extremely high, which was evident by a huge aureola that was surrouding the Moon.

I was keeping an eye on webcams located at nearby ski centres, because the temperature was dropping below zero and snow coverage was scarce, therefore I was hoping for some snow gun action.

Few centres were operating the snow guns, but no diamond dust formation could be seen, so after a while I decided to return back to the city, but still keep an eye in case the conditions change. According to my previous post, Bílá ski centre is supposed to be the holy grail of diamond dust halos around here. But that is not true, there is another ski centre which generates diamond dust very frequently. I stayed up the whole night because I knew something would happen, and I was right, the ski centre I was talking about started generating halos, so I packed up my things and went again.

It is slightly further away than Bílá, so the trip took a while, but it was totally worth it:

This display, to my astonishment, was generated by a single snow gun (in the picture above it is located just behind the trees). No low hanging stratus, just high humidity and one snow gun. And it wasn't even on my previously planned location, it was actually a few kilometers ahead of it.

There are some indications of Parry oriented crystals, uppercave Parry is present and lowercave maybe too. indicated by a brightening on the circumscribed halo. Lowervex Parry was not seen. Wegener was maybe there, but the display itself was changing quite rapidly and I don't think my photos captured it.

Eventually I have decided to finish driving to my location. No halos there, and as I was returning, only faint and diffuse 22° halo was the only one left in the sky.

The crystal swarm was fairly thick, which can be seen in the main photo - the infralateral arcs were hanging in front of the forest. An amazing sight.

Fun addition: I had actually forgotten my gear at the location, and only realized it at home, so I had to return. It was still there!

Mid-elevation halo display with column crystals in control

Throughout my work day there were a number of halos that were coming and going. Around midday there was 22d halo, circumscribed halo, parhelic circle, and parhelia. Later on at break time I got 22 and circumscribed halos and there was a nice infralateral arc on the left and a possible lower suncave parry arc not sure on that need help to identify short piece of arc to the left of 22d halo. Before I left work I imaged an upper suncave parry arc. The final stage had nice upper tangent arc and a complete supralateral arc.

by Michael Ellestad

Moon halo over Southern Finland - oriented columns in command

Little after midnight on the night of 5-6th January a fairly bright 22 halo and upper tangent arc appeared in high clouds. At this stage nothing implied that anything better would be on the way. However, at around 1.30 a.m. the halos arising from oriented columns had got much better and upper and lower tangent arcs stretched out to form a circumscribed halo. Infralateral arcs and a 9 halo appeared as well. Judging from the quality of circumscribed halo and infralateral arcs at the maximum phase one might suspect that rays scattered by oriented columns may have partially contributed to the intensity of the 9 halo.

The display ended at around 4 a.m. when low level clouds rolled in. Shortly before that 46 halo and parhelic circle were well formed (although faint). According to the reports so far the display was best seen in Tampere (photos by Jari Luomanen) and in Riihimaki (photos by Jukka Ruoskanen) .

Lunar display in Switzerland

On Nov/11/2006 I observed a nice high moon halo display in Switzerland. Visible was a bright circumscribed halo and a infralateral or circumhorizon arc.

 

by Mark Vornhusen

 

Originally in Halo reports

Circular circumscribed halo

This high sun picture by Dorothé Trompert was taken in Alice Springs, Australia, on 15 Nov 2005 13:17 LT. The solar height was 75°. Although the halo is almost circular, it is probably not the 22° halo itself. Instead, the strong peak in its intensity near the halo angle and its vivid colours indicates that it is a circumscribed halo. This observation supports my conjecture that in many of the historic reports of widely noticed 22° halos the presence of a bright circumscribed halo contributed to its visibility. This happened, among other cases, with the so-called 'Chernobyl-halo' in 1986 and with Emperor Augustus's halo in 44BC.

Circumscribed halo and pyramid halos in Sardinia

This display was captured by Jan Drahokoupil in Sardinia on 6. September. The 22° halo is surrounded by elliptical circumscribed halo. The small halo around the sun is 9° halo or 9° column arc (or both together). Simulations could give better clue. Later on the display changed and there were also 18° plate arcs.

More photos here.

Lower 23 degree plate arc observed in Ohio USA 5-9-06

While on break time at work I decided to check the sky and saw a 22d halo with a rather suspicious brightening that encircled the lower half of the halo. As the cloud moved on a rather bright arc appeared and I thought circumscribed halo no it was a lower 23 degree plate arc!! I could tell because there was no circumscribed halo which goes all the way around while lower 23 degree plate arc tails off away from the circular halo. Weak 18 degree halo was also observed. The photo has been given an unsharp mask to show the halo better. You can clearly see the arc tailing away from the halo while diminishing in intensity

Tranquility of a high-sun halo display

This fairly decent high-sun display was captured while I was on lunch break. Although there were no rare halos but there was 22d halo, circumscribed halo, smooth complete parhelic circle, and faint circumhorizon arc. The best part in my opinion was the parhelic circle. I have applied unsharp mask to bring the halos out better. Photos were taken on the 11th.