(( halos ))
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oh! there are circumscribed halos here… I keep forgetting what they’re called and they’re relatively new to me.
But am I correct? And is there other stuff going on here? Is that smaller circle of 9° halo or a corona?
and is there other stuff going on here? Is that smaller circle a 9° halo or a corona?
Thanks so much.
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Hello Arielko, I have trouble to post an answer to your intriguing question about – what I think – are very rare halos. Here are two links with info about what I think you saw: https://atoptics.co.uk/halo/pyrhalo.htm and https://atoptics.co.uk/halo/pyrpars.htm.
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Here is the link: http://www.thehalovault.blogspot.com/
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well, i’ve heard back from alec, thank you, for that recommendation!
here’s what he said
“With regard to your question about hexagonal looking halo, by and large this is either a digital artefact or lens aperture effect and not a real halo. This kind of effect appears very frequently; after a while you just learn to ignore it.
With regard to the halos you have captured, there is nothing really unusual and most of them are very common. From what I can see you have photographed 9, 18 and 22 degree halos, an upper tangent arc, a sundog (singular parhelion plural parhelia), and part of the parhelic circle.”
Part of the parhelic circle! I didn’t know that was available to me in western Massachusetts and i’m utterly delighted that that’s the case.
hans, I’m curious if that is what you had picked up on?
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Thank you arielko. Great to hear you already have an answer from Alec. And to be honest I expected more and I have some questions about his answer.
First of all a 9 degrees and 18 degrees halo isn’t that common in my opinion (I still hope to spot one sometime), but I know that the halo vault ususally is about far more rare pheneomena. In my opinion the 9 and 18 degrees halo are already a very nice catch. So far so good.
Anyway, he also sees a sundog and part of a parheleic circle on one of the images and that surprises me since I can’t find them. I wonder on which image they are supposed to be. Btw: a parhelic circle isn’t limited to occur in certain parts of the hemispheres. I hope you may spot it sometime also in western Massachusets.
I agree with Alec on the hexagobal looking halo (the last one above). That one is just a normal 22 degrees halo I think.
I may be stubborn but where Alec sees a upper tangent arc I want to note that a UTA must touch the 22 degrees halo and on image 3 ans 4 I see a distance between the top halo and the circle underneath. I don’t have the tools to distinguish a 18 degrees halo from a 22 or 23 degrees halo, so here I can’t be sure. That is particularly the case for image 5. On number 5 I can’t figure out the distance from the sun measured in degrees of what I see there. It is this one that might have been special. What I want to say here is that a UTA is possible, but I suspect just this one to be a rare 23 plate parhelion. Note that it is colorless where a UTA usually shows rather bright colors.
I would like to discuss the images a bit more and to know the analysis per image. But here I must stop. Too many questions we both can’t answer. Sill, the images keep intriguing me. Thanks for sharing them and for sharing the answers you got. The only possible thing left to do is to send my answers to Alec and when you do so, please excuse for being stubborn.
Hans
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yes, I was wondering about the colorlessness! I thought a fog bow was the only phenomenon that would appear as a colorless arc.
also, I should apologize, I sent him a total of 11 images, one of which contained a sun dog (and the partial parhelic circle) as it related to the first halo above. The others pertained to the item with an appearance of a 9° halo which keeps looking hexagonal to me! and i shall remain stubborn about that, even if it is indeed one of life’s great illusions… :)
As you can tell, I’m new to this, but was also surprised when he said UTA. He sent me this fantastic tool: https://atoptics.co.uk/halo/colsolat.htm to show the different angles of arc. But even with this tool I don’t see it draping over in a concave way as it does in the photo. Of course I have never heard of a 23 plate parhelion, but now I have, and am very intrigued.
If it helps, halos 3, 4, and 5 above were all in may and june of this year, all between 4-6pm in easthampton, mass. pix 1 & 2 are june, same location, but around 9am
“The only possible thing left to do is to send my answers to Alec” i’m not sure if you’re asking me to, but if so, of course!
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Thank you arielko. I now understand the sundog and parhelic circle. Great to hear you even sent more images. That can only help identify what’s observed. The only thing I am not sure of is which combinations of images are taken on one day. I assume that 1 and 2 are taken on one day and that 3, 4 and 5 are also taken on one day. Is that right?
I know about the tool to simulate the appearance of a UTA with the height of the sun. Atoptics is one of my favorite sites about optical phenomena. There is also a German site meteoros.de on which you can simulate more halo appearances depending on the height of the sun. These simulations are fantastic to play with to verify thoughts.
I think you have a point about the form that seems to be different from the possible forms of a UTA. Also the colorless is something that makes it different imo.
I know that Alec, who answered to your question, once was a regular user of the Forum before he left the Forum to spend more time on the halo phenomena you can find on the halo vault. I had some wonderful discussions with him (and others) and he also learned me very useful and practical things about halos and checking images on them. I think he must be able to check our discussion over here, since he is still a member. I am not sure if he wants to do so, but I think it would be much easier to discuss directly. This is not a straight answer to your last question of course, but overthinking this, I will try to address him myself via the halo vault and try to seduce him to read our discussion here. To be continued. Wish me luck:)
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Arielko, how did you manage to send your question. I submit a message underneath the text “submit an observation” with a click on the ‘send’ button and then I see a message ‘sending’ while the send button is made less bright and …. it stays that way. It looks like nothing has been sent. Did you do it differently?
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hello!
so much to delve into here.. i’d also like to upload what I think is a 9° halo with an interesting addition, but let me just quickly answer your two questions:
that’s exactly how I did it, through the ‘submit an observation form’… but I don’t remember if the form gave me tech issues or not.
images 1 & 2 and images 3 & 4 are two different days, and image 5 is another different day. so three different halos, three different days. does that make sense?
ak
ps, edited to add two more halos of interest:
and
am i correct in thinking the both different halos here include a 9°, and the second includes a circumscribed halo? and… is that a very sneaky cloud? or is it the PC?
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arielko, I looked at your latest two. The first one shows a 22 degres halo (nut you knew already) but above there seems to be a faint suncave aprry arc. The second one is a 22 degrees halo too and above there is uppertangent arc. It would extend in a circumscribes arc but I can’t detect more. I suppose the resolution of the downloaded images are not sufficent to see more.
Just some moments ago I succeeded to submit my message. It was a matter of cookies I first had to delete to be able to proceed. After this I finally got the message that is was sent. Pffff. I am curious for the answer.
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Hello Ariel, I got a really nice and extensive answer from Alec about the halos you spotted. I am very grateful for the attention he gave it. In the end he explained that my arguments were right and that there might be a 23 plate arc and also plate parhelions, but he can’t be sure. He is right that it is only sure when it is sure. So far I am already happy with this result.
I suppose he explained you something more in his answer to you and also gave the advise to make RAW pictures when you spot halos in case your camera supports RAW. I will keep that in mind too. Let’s keep our eyes open for new opportunities. I will certainly do.
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wow. this is like going back to school. i love learning. And I don’t get to do it much these days. So I am very grateful for this thread.
It is very exciting about the potential 23 plate arc. I’m so glad you were able to get in touch with him. how satisfying to spot something like that. And that I have these amazing phenomena available to me just outside the door, that’s priceless, and makes me all the more curious. Thank you for spotting it! I’d never even heard of it before. You’ve contributed to my learning experience.
I looked into an app to shoot RAW, but i’ll have to wait until I can afford it. I definitely want to try it.
Fiddling with the last photo I added above, I suspect there’s a parhelic circle there, do you see it? here it is with some screenshots from a quick google search. I included those because of the angle. The arms of the circle are raised, so i was suspicious it was a curving contrail. But I guess it depends on the angle of the sun?
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I am glad you like this so much. And yes I agree that you have revealed a faint parhelic circle in your last image. I recognize your enthusiasm that I also feel when I have spotted something special.
When you want to dive in a lot more about halos and optical pheneomena (for instance rainbows) I recommend to look for all that is published on atoptics. I know that is really a lot, so it might be better to do it bit by bit, just searching for the things you want to know more about. This is the place where I started too. The site is loaded withh great info, images and science. When you like that, it is the place to be.
I wish you lots of fun with it.
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parentheses?
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