A big display from Sotkamo, Finland – with a possible new halo

 4x3, 2590-2592, 2608-2610, 2614-2616, 2623-2625

Two years ago the halo community got its latest novel multiple scattering halo in the supermassive Borlänge display: a halo that is both parhelion of the tangent arc and tangent arc of the parhelion.

It seems now we have a second case. On 25 November Sami Härmä photographed an impressive display in the Naapurivaara village of Sotkamo, Finland, and in the photos he published in Taivaanvahti people thought of seeing fuzzy spots reminiscent of the Borlänge parhelion-tangent arcs.

Single photos didn't respond well to enhancing, so it was good there were some with similar enough composition and taken with sufficient time between them to do stacks. These stacks seem indeed to confirm the presence of the parhelion-tangent arcs.

And there may be more. In the stacks both Wegener arc and uppervex Hastings arc materialized, and in addition to having the parhelion-tangent arc enhancements in the expected location on Wegener arc, it looks like the Hastings might have its own enhancements, too: a parhelion-Parry arc. This would be a novel halo, though in the light of this new wisdom, one might see it now also in the Borlänge display on the right side. 

If we consider the prospects of parhelion-Parry arc purely from the perspective of sun elevation, then the Sotkamo display comes out more favourably. That's because the lower sun elevation of 4.5 degrees in Sotkamo gives, all else being equal, a brighter Parry than the 6.0 degrees for those Magnus Edbäck photos of the Borlänge display in the link above.

At the end of this post are three photos that allow to compare the intensity of the Parry and tangent arcs in the Sotkamo display. While the tangent arc looks a bit brighter of the two, the difference may not be as big as in the Borlänge display, at least judging by the video by MrWhikked. The Edbäck photos might also be re-visited in this respect, the Parry and tangent arcs are washed white by processing in currently published versions of his photos.

A HaloPoint simulation of the display, arrows marking the parhelion-tangent arc and parhelion-Parry arc. I was not able to simulate the display's Ounasvaara arc and uppercave Parry arc with one Parry crystal population. Triangles were needed to get the former, tabulars the latter. The V-shape inside 22 halo is two multiple scattering halos superposed: tangent arc and Parry arc from subsun. Neither has been observed yet, the V in the Sotkamo display inside 22 halo is Moilanen arc. Fixed multiple scattering probability 0.7 was used.

 

A baffling detail is the weakling circumzenith arc. The apparent multiple scattering halos in this display need not only very bright tangent and Parry arcs, but also very bright parhelia. And very bright parhelia should translate to strong circumzenith arc. Actually, it is not just weak. The cza simply looks strange, as if made of two parts: a brighter stub embedded in the 46 supralateral arc, continued by a much fainter extension. And is there even a gap separating the two parts? Compare this to the normal looking Borlänge display cza.

Let's move on. Notable mentions in the Sotkamo display are of course the uppervex Hastings that is a great catch in a solar display, the third one on record, and the outstanding Ounasvaara arc (see the photos in Taivaanvahti), which is likewise the third known solar case. It was easily bright enough for visual, and Härmä indeed wrote me of having seen it with his eyes.

There have been other displays with monstrous Parry contribution, but this is the first time we get a wide photographic coverage of the sky of such a display. In the Borlänge display the video by MrWhikked gave us glimpses of what's going on elsewhere in the sky, providing valuable extra info, but it is nice to have photos now.

Härmä took many of his photos by bracketing three shots in quick succession. The stacks shown here are made of such separate sets. In the info under the photos for example 4x3 means four three image sets. For the record, the photo id numbers are also given. The two four set stacks (normal and flip stacked) were a bit of a stretch, there was quite a lot of distortion between the better matching two 2x3 sets from which I made them. That's why you see the helic arc duplicating towards edges. But in the center where it mattered for the multiple scattering halos the distortion is less. Folks with more technical prowess surely could do better work of Härmä's photos than I managed. Although the original raws are not publicly up for download, Härmä is happy to send the batch should anyone like to take a look. The photos were taken at 12:40-12:57 local time, exif gives an hour later time as the camera was in summer time.

The display occurred 6 km from the slopes. Härmä tells the temperature was around -7 C, right in the -5 to -10 C range where the most massive snow gun displays are forged. The fact that it was cloudy before the display appeared and that it was soon finished by clouds taking over again, tells this was a punch hole cloud display – particles from snow gunning turning a small area of low hanging stratus into ice crystals.           

                                         4x3 + flip stack, 2590-2592, 2608-2610, 2614-2616, 2623-2625

 

                                                        

 2x3, 2590-2592, 2608-2610

 

2x3, 2614-2616, 2623-2625

 

 Brightness comparison of the tangent and Parry arc. The photos are picked from three of the four sets used in stacks.

 

Post corrected 6.12.2020. Replaced "infralateral" with "supralateral".

A fresh display from Rovaniemi

No more drawer displays from Rovaniemi – this is from the early morning of last Saturday, 20 November! 

On the eve of action the sky cleared up soon after midday, but wind remained strong. I kept checking the weather station graphs and the habit of the power plant plume that is visible from my window. At around 3 am the signs were such that it was better to go. 

When I arrived to the ski center on the other side of Ounasvaara, the action was already on: nice tangent arcs above the bright slope and ski jump floodlights. But the stuff was just hanging around the guns, no good for the spotlight there because of the excess light pollution. 

So I waited. At around 5 am the diamond dust took finally off, reaching towards the city. I followed, getting stoked by the lower tangent arcs that swept by under each streetlight as I drove. About a halfway to the city center I took off from the main road and went to a place for small boats by the river.

Because of the tight space there I had to place the lamp pretty close to the camera. It is about 9 degrees below the horizon. The lamp is the same old 75W HID that I used four years ago. I have another light with very tight beam that I hope to try soon. 

A HaloPoint simulation is included. As usual, I was not able to get it right. Once some detail got perfected, another worsened. That's how it goes. The sub-120 parhelia are rather weak in the photo, but when I viewed them from the side of the beam, they were quite striking. I think in the center of the beam where the camera was, a visual would have been impossible.

One more case of sub-Kern companion arcs

Sometimes a sub-Kern arc "bleeds": it is accompanied by thin arcs below the brightest parts. The first case we photographed on the night of 6/7 January 2016 and second on 28/29 November 2016, both in Rovaniemi. Here is a third display with these arcs in Rovaniemi, photographed on the night of 4/5 January 2017. The lamp is somewhere between 5 and 10 degrees below the horizon. The temperature at this roadside field was -38 C, the lowest I experienced that winter. Earlier that night, at another location, I had photographed odd radius sub-plate arcs.

 

Below are three more photos from that location, taken before the the sub-Kern company arcs appeared.

Possible Tape arc fragment with other sub-par Parry arcs?

 

 

 On the 27th of October a quick and interesting halo display took place in Ostrava, Czech Republic. I had little time to observe and the cirrus cloud shield was moving quickly. I was stacking frames with a camera only holding it in my hand. Meanwhile, I took some mobile phone pictures, but the quality is sub-par for any post-processing.

Before the clouds moved to a left-side position of the Sun, a rather weak uppercave Parry was observed.

  

 

 I was almost 100 % sure I saw Lowitz arcs as well, but there are no traces of them on single and stacked frames.

Below is a composite of stacked frames with colour, B-R processing, a simulation and its superimposition over the B-R processed stack.

Let me know, what you think.

Mysterious sunvex 28° arcs in Yunnan, China

On August 26 2020, Zhang Yibing from Pu'er, Yunnan captured a sunset odd-radius display, in which a bright 28° arc dominates the show. 

Stacked and sharpened. © ZHANG Yibing, shown with permission.

Evolvement of the display. No sharpening. © ZHANG Yibing, shown with permission.

The arc’s brightness is almost on par with the 20° plate arc, while other plate arcs such as the 24° and 35° ones are exceptionally weak and barely show up in stacked photos. What’s more interesting about the 28° arc is its shape. What we are seeing in this display is a gently sun-vex arc which doesn’t quite follow the 28° sun-centric circle.

Stacked and background subtracted photos reveal a left 28° sun-vex arc as well. Note how both arcs curve away from, instead of follow, the 28° circle.

Such appearance contradicts current theories. In the 30-32 pyramid and cubic ice models ( http://www.thehalovault.blogspot.com/2018/09/28-plate-arc-captured-in-haikou-china.html ), the predicted 28° arcs do not appear sun-vex like the 24° plate arcs do. Quite the opposite, when the crystals are wobbly, the arcs should look more sun-cave and follow the 28° sun-centric ring.

The puzzling shape can still be achieved by tweaking the available theories though. JI Yun and I did some experiments in ZHANG Jiajie’s simulation program and came up with a bizarre solution.

First is to tilt a triangular 30-32 upper pyramid by 109.5° until one of its pyramidal faces goes horizontal. Then, apply a loose ( 15° wobble or more) sun-ward azimuthal lock on both tilted 30-32 crystal and cubic ice.

The revised models produce identical sun-vex 28° arcs which closely match the ones seen in the display.

The idea of az-locking crystals in the air is certainly outlandish and should hardly be taken seriously unless concrete evidence is found in real world. That being said, there’s only so much we can do with available theories. New ideas/experiments are much needed.

This display marks the 11th record of 28° arcs in China since 2016, and more importantly, the 1st record revealing the arcs' real shape. Is it possible that what we're seeing in this display are actually new halos, different from the previous 10 Chinese records and the legendary Lascar arcs? Or is it that all these Chinese 28° arcs are a same new breed different from the Lascar ones? We'll need many more similar displays to draw a conclusion. Looking forward to the next summer.

Update:

Nicolas Lefaudeux proposed another possibility for the arc's peculiar appearance:

"On my side, the sunvex shape is still not so obvious to me. I see more a vertical elongation of the 28° arc + some patch of 28° halo. 

Effects like diffraction by "vertically narrow" crystal faces would create such vertical elongation (like a plate crystal with exotic faces instead of regular prism faces). Unfortunately, such effects cannot be simulated with our current softwares. The appearance of the halos (smooth and rather undefined) make me think of diffraction-affected halos (small crystal faces), like most of the odd radius halos. We would need cases with sharper arcs in order to be more conclusive."

Long subparhelic arcs in Rovaniemi spotlight display

 

Diamond dust season is about to begin, the hissing of guns at the Ruka resort may be heard already at the end of September. To get in the spirit, let's reach into the drawer and grab this display which appeared on the night of 7/8 February 2017 in Rovaniemi. At first it was bog-standard plate with CNA, sub-120, and sub-Lilje / subparhelic circle patch opposite to the lamp, but then it changed, giving these long subparhelic arcs. The lamp sits at the usual ~5 degrees below the horizon. The location is Sieriaapa bog some 6 km east from the ski center. This is the direction where the diamond dust most often heads to, guided by the prevailing wind and topography.

 

August halos from Moravia, Czech Republic

Jiří Kaňovský from Černotín, Czech Republic observed three separate halo complexes this August.


August 2nd, 2020 – bright odd radius halos

I (Jiří Kaňovský) was visiting my aunt when I’ve noticed a halo making cirrostratus cloud shield. It was obvious that what I saw were not classical halos, but odd radii ones. I was able to observe 9°, 18°, 20°, 22°, 23°, 24° and 35° halos. Near the end of the observation, a bright 23° parhelion joined the party.

 

 

August 10th, 2020 – classic halos with a twist

These halos were observed due to an extensive cirrus/cirrostratus cumulonimbogenitus shield from a previous thunderstorm activity. At the evening hours, some of the cirrus clouds began to sublimate. Among the classic halos like 22° halo, UTA, CZA, SLA and 22° parhelion, later image stacking revealed a bright spot near supposed 9° column arcs and a 24° halo or a 24° column arc as well.

August 24th, 2020 – almost invisible uppercave Parry

There was a surprise 14 days later in the form of a weak but nice halo complex. A 22° halo, parhelions, weak UTA and CZA were observed. Later image processing revealed a weak uppercave Parry and a hint of a supralateral arc.

All these observations are a part of an endeavour to bring an old project back to life – the Czech HOP (Halo Observation Project). After 10 years of inactivity, multiple people are joining again to work on the project so it could be a place for amateurs and “professionals” alike where they can share their photos of observed complexes.