Ice Crystal Halos

On the morning of 25th January 2012, I observed a large halo display near Achsheim, a little village north of Augsburg/Bavaria/Germany (450m elevation). Beside this village, there’s a little river called Schmutter. It’s not a skiing region and there are no snow cannons.

The day before it was cloudy and it was snowing a little bit, during the following night there weren’t any clouds and in the morning there was „normal“ fog. The minimum temperature in the night was about
5 °C below zero.

I don’t know when the halo display began, because when I reached this region full of ice crystals it existed already. And it still existed when I left the region (10:00 a.m). I took photos of it from about 9:25 until 10:00 a.m (CET).

You can see well the 22° halo, sun dogs, supralateral arc, the upper tangent arc, circumzenithal arc, tape arc, infralateral arc and last but not least the Moilanen’s arc. All phenomenas were seen all the time I was there. ( 1 - 2 - 3 )

Daniel Eggert

In the afternoon of October 14, I observed a large halo display in Bochum, Germany.
It started at 14.25 CET (15.25 CEST) with circumzenithal and supralateral arc. During the following minutes, also the upper tangent arc, a bright Parry arc and the 22°-halo appeared, followed by both sundogs and a faint upper circular Lowitz arc on the left side. ( 1 )

At 14.50 CET, I noticed a conspicuous white arc, forming a circle around the zenith together with the CZA. A closer look showed that this circle was not really circular, but rather had the shape of an American football.

This white arc grew longer and longer, an as ist passed the supralateral arc, it turned out to be the heliac arc, clearly visible in thin cirrus clouds.
At 14.55 CET, also the upper left Tape arc appeared as a bright colourful spot on the supralateral arc. At the same time, the left part of the Parry arc grew very long, almost reaching the supralateral arc, while its upper part faded away. ( 2 )

After 15.00 CET, the halo display slowly vanished, but before it faded away, left Lowitz arc was visible for about 10 minutes, as well as a very bright part of the parhelic circle. The display ended at 15.25 CET, having showed 10 different types of haloes with up to 8 being visible at the same time.

Peter Krämer, Bochum, Germany

I took these pictures during the beginning of a flight from Paris to Washington DC on the 18th of September. It shows the subanthelic area. At first the subanthelion appeared alone ( 1 ).

Then a short time later subparhelic circle and diffused arcs appeared too for about 1 minute ( 2 ).

Later on the flight, I could observe some brightening in the subanthelic area but not as conspicuous as in the beginning of the flight

Nicolas Lefaudeux

These pyramidal crystal halos were observed by Anthelene over Sakaiminato city in West Japan. The most interesting features of this high cloud display are the 9°, 20°and 24° plate arcs. Marko Riikonen has made a simulation with HaloPoint2.0 ( 1 ), according to him, the 20° plate arc had been photographed only once or twice in high clouds before. More of Anthelene's images can be seen on her website: http://bluemomenttime.blog89.fc2.com/blog-entry-442.html

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