Display of 3rd August 2017 in Pskov oblast, Russia

Every frame of animation is stack which covers 2,5 min. Colored version is here

At the begining of the display, beautiful cirrus covered the sky, but I did not notice any halos at the time. When I came out a little later, I was surprised to see a bright parhelion and a middle Lowitz arc which crosses it! Cumulus limited the display, so I could observe halos only in gaps between these clouds. There was one short episode when I saw bright upper tangent and suncave Parry arcs. The following rare halos were found in the stacks:

 -well defined upper and middle Lowitz arcs (1) and possible lower Lowitz arc (2)
-part of helic arc (3)
-supralateral Tape arc (4)

The all-sky display of 30th May 2017 at Pskov Oblast, Russia

08-09

The first part of this display occurred between 6-50 and 8-30 hours. During this period only the 22 halo (which accompanied by other common halos in stacks) were seen in this part of the sky. However, at the end of this period a wonderful cloud crossed the sun. This cloud gave a complex of rare halos from Parry and Lowitz orientations - on the stack I found the sharp and bright upper suncave Parry arc together with the upper Lowitz arc. I saw a part of the middle Lowitz arc, which was below the right parhelion, with the naked eye (1).

Thereafter, cirrus clouds cleared, and in satellite images no high-level clouds were visible, so I went to a bicycle training although the meteogram would predict the arrival of a new portion of cirrus in the coming hours. If I had looked at sat24.com during my training, I could have seen that the air ahead of a low-pressure system after passing the Baltic sea, created fresh cirrus clouds above Estonia!

At 15-40 I found that far cirrus clouds which were visible for the last hour at the horizon, now reached the sun. At this moment I saw a colourful lower tangent arc. It was only 5 km to my house , so I accelerated in order to be in time to photograph it. However, a few minutes later I saw a large scale complex in the sky - above the sun there also appeared an upper tangent arc, both parhelia, and a full parhelic circle! The last few kilometers I rode as fast as I could. Luckily, I not too late!

16-17. All three Lowitz arcs are in one image. The B-R version is available here

Visually, it seemed to me that the bright parhelic circle contained a red fringe, which also surrounded a diffuse 120 parhelion. Blue minus red versions of some stacks clearly show this diffraction effect (2).  The cirrus clouds were beautiful, they contained not only a smooth veil, but also sharp textures like virga. What they are fresh was seen with the naked eye.

16-37

After half an hour, the bright parhelic circle disappeared, when clouds which produced it, drifted to the south-east direction. The upper tangent arc then started to get brighter. At this time I also saw visually both the infralateral arc and the 46 halo above the sun from the 11-00 to 01-00 positions. The complex became less bright after one hour, but at the same time, fragments of a distant parhelic circle was still visible.

17-08

Thereafter, I could see only a split upper tangent arc. With the naked eye I could not understand what it is - a Parry arc or a 23 plate arc. The stack taken during this period showed an excellent odd-radius plate complex!

Recent displays from Northwestern Russia

In this post I want to share some of my observations from last month, which I made in St Petersburg (from 15th April to 5th May) and in Pskov Oblast (from 7th May to present time). In total there were eleven displays, six of them comprising pyramidal halo forms. Many of these pyramidal displays were minor, so I will not present them.

20th April

The photo on left shows a purely odd-radius plate complex. There are only the upper 23 plate arc with its 23 halo and a couple of 18 plate arcs. On the photo on right you can see fragments of weak odd radius circular halos. Together with the broad 22 halo at the 02-00 position there is the 20 halo and also the diffuse 35 halo.

28th April

Together with classic halo forms in stacks pyramidal halos appeared with odd-radius plate arcs. On photos above you can see lower 24 plate arcs with the 24 halo and the 9 halo (with possible the lower 9 plate arc). The weak and diffuse upper 23 plate arc is also available.

30th April


In the morning there was a short display which lasted less than one hour. The display was not predicted by the meteogram, so maybe I missed most of the display, which was earlier that morning. In any case I saw bright parhelia with the colourful circumzenithal arc, and got in the stack the strong parhelic circle and the upper suncave Parry arc together with the nice upper tangent arc. I think it is the Parry arc, and not an upper 23 plate arc, because the display does not contain no other pyramidal halo forms, and the arc looks pretty sharp.

1st May

In the morning I observed the large and bright upper tangent arc for around one hour. Infralateral arcs were easily seen with naked eye. Together with bright parhelia I saw fragments of a parhelic circle. In stacks the rare Wegener arc was found.

5th May

On that day there was a protracted display, that lasted between six and sixteen hours. But my camera had recorded interesting halos only at the start, on the sunrise. It was an odd-radius circular complex which contained pyramid halos with radii 9, 18, 24 and 35 degrees. It seems the 24 halo included rudimentary upper and lower 24 plate arcs.

10th May

No rare halos on that morning but I saw the supralateral arc visually very well, that happens not often. A curious circumzenithal arc appeared a little later. The CZA was diffuse, that is not typical for this halo. 

Halo Complex 15th October 2007

After over 90 days of above 90 degree temps and no halos this half-way decent display shows itsself in high clouds. Upon leaving work, I got quite a few photos. In all I got 22d halo, parhelia, upper tangent arc, bits of parhelic circle, infralateral arcs, 120d parhelia, and an upper suncave parry arc. While on the road I observed a rather bright 120d parhelion on the left side. As the patch of cloud shifted to the north the blue spot appeared and got several photos of it. When enhanced, the bluespot shows green, blue and purple and possible red but can't be sure. The one photo showing the Parry has ugly power lines but could not help that because I was shooting out the car window. If you wondering if I was driving at the time I wasn't because one should not drive and take photos at the same time. During those halo free days the temps were breaking records even in October and it was nice to see halos again.

 

by Michael Ellestad

 

Original post in Halo reports

Concave & convex Parry arcs photographed in Georgia

A visitor of my homepage emiled me this photo of a complex display that took place in Rome, Georgia and the year I can't remember but it was in the early 90's and of all the halos the bright upper concave and convex parry arcs are the most interesting. This is probably the best I have seen where both upper parry arcs are visible . Other images show a bright supralateral arc as well. The person who sent the photo is Loren Hall and his email is: bctimebandit@earthlink.com

 

by Michael Ellestad

 

Original post in Halo reports

Concave and convex Parry arc in Germany

When Stefan Danner was driving home in the evening of September 12th, he saw a pair of very beautiful sundogs. After having reached home, he noticed that there were two more halos – a very rare combination of a concave and a convex Parry arc. He could watch the two arcs getting brighter and brighter by the time. The impressive phenomenon lasted about 10 minutes before it ended showing a bright sundog.

Later, when he looked at the “raw pictures” closely, disenchantment followed: there was not a lot to see for the eyes of a layman. Only after having processed the pictures a little more or less, the effect of the halos in the pictures was like he felt it. (He saw them better than visible in the “raw pictures”, but not as intensive as they look after the processing.)

More pictures

By Claudia Hinz

Lunar display in France with 9° halo and Lowitz arcs

On the evening of 30 October 2006, I saw this lunar display in the west of France, close to Nantes. The photos were taken between 18h and 21h UT, the moon elevation was between 19 and 24 degrees.

A lot of halos were visible, including 9° halo, upper and lower Lowitz arc and a bright upper suncave Parry arc.

The orange colour of the sky is due to a strong light pollution. The images have been processed to reduce this effect and unsharp mask has been applied to enhance the halos. I got also nice displays the 2 previous days.

More images of the display here: 1, 2, 3.

 

by Cyrille Badouin

 

Originally in Halo reports

Rare halos in Czech rep. Oct. 30 and 31

On October 30 in Prague was observed rare halos. Stepanka Kosova had Lowitz arcs and 120 deg. parhelia (title photo). Lukas Shrbeny had nice 120 deg. parhelia too. I observed rare halos in two last days. On October 30 I saw: 9°, 20° halos and Parry suncave arc. On October 31 I seen: Parry suncave arc , upper and lower Lowitz arcs and probably circular Lowitz arc too. M.Popek and R.Manak seen 9° halos in Lunar displays.

 

by Patrik Trncak

 

Originally in Halo reports

Parry sunvex and suncave arcs

On October 28 in Czech Republic I and Lukas Kosarek observed Parry arcs. I saw sunvex arc too (you see title photo) and Lukas take photos of Suncave arc. We saw a nice supralateral arc also.

Parry and Lowitz arcs in Czech Republic

On October 20 and 21 I and Roman Manak saw an upper suncave Parry arc. On October 21 I also observed Lowitz arcs too. On photo is nice Parry arc by Roman. My Parry arc and my Lowitz arcs.

Unidentified halo display in Romania

Attila Kosa-Kiss from Salonta, Romania observed on 29th September 2006 a very interesting halo display at a sun elevation of 12°. Unfortunately, there were no photos but there is a sketch. The most probable explanation is the existence of suncave [H] and sunvex [G] Parry arcs, as shown by the simulation from Les Cowley. Other possibilities would be an circular Lowitz arc [F], as seen on the simulation with HALOET (random: 0.5, plates: 0.5, columns: 0.5, parry: 0.5, Lowitz: 4.0, number of rays=150000). On the same day was observed several time in Germany and Czech the upper part of Lowitz arcs. But Romania was influenced by another weather front (with another cirrus clouds) like the middle European area. Further comments and ideas are very welcome!

 

by Claudia Hinz

 

Originally in Halo reports

Lowitz arc in Prague

Upper part of Upper Lowitz arc was observed yesterday (9.10.) in Prague, Czech by Milan Cerny. Milan seen nice parhelia, upper tangent arc and Parry suncave arc. Red arrow show Lowitz arc. Here is second photo

Wegener arcs in Czechoslovakia again

Today (9:00 - 11:30 UT) was next nice day. Sky in Holesov showed clear and coloured Wegener arc and other arcs (common halos and upper Parry suncave arc, lower Lowitz arc and infralateral arc).

Display was photographed also by others. Here are the photos by Martin Jankovic from Brno.

[text: Patrik Trncak]

HOP meeting 13 - 16 August 2006

Meeting of Halo Observation Project members was in Kuncice pod Ondrejnikem (Czech republic) - beautiful landscape of hills and woods. We had very nice observations of some rare halos: Parry suncave arc, 9 halos and 18 halos, on the high clouds. See PHOTO from Martin Popek. On photo from left to right: Vladimir Odvarka, Roman Manak, Lukas Kosarek, Jan Kondziolka, Martin Jankovic, Martin Popek and me. Photo was taken on meteorological station, Lysa hora.