Pyramidal halos over Frankfurt am Main

Andreas Zeiske observed a pyramidal halo on 6 June 2011 in Frankfurt am Main. In the images, the 22° halo, 18° halo and the left 18° lateral arc can be seen about the St.-Katharinen-Church. The phenomenon formed on a thin field of Cirrus clouds and lasted for 10 minutes at around 08.00 CET. About 5 hours later a cold front with rain showers and thunderstorms swept across the city of Frankfurt. ( 1 - 2 )

Andreas Zeiske, Germany

Atmospheric Phenomena Blog

The blog on atmospheric optics has moved to a new address ( 1 ), and has recently been updated with many interesting observations. As a teaser, Michael Großmann's image of a tertiary order rainbow can be seen on the right.

Pyramidal halo from Thailand

The above image was photographed by Pitan Singhasaneh on 5 June in Bangkok, Thailand.

Simultaneous upper tangent arc and rainbows

On 4 June 2011 Pietari Puranen observed these rainbows in Jyväskylä. When he turned around to see the sky around the sun, he observed an upper tangent arc. Remarkably, the arc formed in virga precipitating from the same low clouds around the rainbow forming cumulonimbus. It is rare to see halos in virga so close to rainbows.

As column crystals are formed in temperatures relatively close to 0 degrees Celsius we may assume the Virga has been born in temperatures around, say, -4 to -9 degrees Celcius. At least in those temperatures diamond dust close to the ground seems to most often exhibit column crystals.

Double sun effect

On May 1st 2011 cumulonimbus clouds precipitating hail were commmon. These clouds exhibited clear praecipitatio and later in the evening they featured prominent virga. In these virga a sun pillar formed and as the sun descended behing stratocumulus a double sun effect was seen. A series of images is provided to see the progression of the effect. The real sun can be seen descending behing the stratocumulus.

The first observation of this effect was by Giovanni Cassini in 1693 (see e.g. Riikonen 2011 (1)). By clicking the above image a larger version can be seen. A full image gallery is available online (2). Marko Riikonen also captured images from the other side of the lake (3).

New book on halos

The Finnish Astronomical Association URSA has just published a new book on halos by Marko Riikonen. This book combines the latest halo science with stunning images from all around the world.

Spanning 168 pages, the book presents, illustrates and analyses all the known (and the less well known!) halo forms in great detail. In addition, the newly made discoveries and methodologies concerning spotlight displays are discussed in depth. Many historical displays are also included as a reference. Particular care has been put into preparing the beautiful computer simulations that are used to explain the ice crystal populations behind each display.

The variety of the images is striking and Riikonen has obviously spent a lot of time in finding great examples. Luckily the quality of printing matches these images: I have rarely, if ever, seen a print job this good. Even the faintest halos can be distinguisted in the images.

As Riikonen is a long-time expert in the field, the substance of the book is solid and provides everybody from beginners to experts with new insights about halo science. Being such a significant contribution to the field of atmospheric optics one can but hope for a quick release of an English language edition.

A few select pages can be previewed online (1). Publisher information (2).

Riikonen, Marko (2011) Halot. Jääkidepilvien valoilmiöt. [Halos. The optical phenomena of ice crystal clouds]. Tähtitieteellinen yhdistys URSA ry, Helsinki.

Liljequist superparhelia & a nucleation agent gun

This Liljequist superparhelia was observed in the spotlight beam on 5 January 2011. The lamp is about a degree or two below the horizon, thus giving the central stage to the Liljequist superparhelia. The Liljequist parhelia can be seen against the snowy ground below the superparhelia.

The halos were seen in diamond dust that was generated by my water ice nucleation agent gun operating ca. 1 kilometer away from the site of the observation. The nucleation agent gun can operate autonomously for hours since the water supply is automated. The temperatures varied between -22 and -27 degrees Celsius.

The image above shows some colour artefacts (the background sky is not even color) as we were also testing Riikonen latest HID lamp (Marko Riikonen accompanied me during this night) that has two high intensity discharge bulbs. Unfortunately we were only able to fire up one bulb. Two bulbs would have produced a more even beam in terms of colours and luminosity.

Full image gallery is available (1). It also contains a lengthier account on the evening.

The nucleation agent gun can be seen in action in a separate photo gallery (2).