Displays

With the great lunar halo display from the beginning of the month still fresh in memory, Marko Mikkilä drove again to Sotkamo last monday. This time the catch was less spectacular, but something was nevertheless seen in the spotlight beam.…

Spotlight beam revealed a bunch of pyramidal crystal halos on 14th December 2009 at Janakkala, Finland. I drove to Kalpalinna ski resort, where snow guns were turned on. Immediately after walking into the spotlight beam I noticed a halo well…

Several of us have been talking about a possible explanation for M-arcs. The responsible crystals are twinned trapezoidal plates that have what might be called restricted Lowitz orientations. The crystals perform rotational oscillations about a horizontal axis, with the equilibrium…

Sometimes halo display actually comes to your door step. On October 14th Toivo Säkkinen got out of his house in Kuusamo to feed the birds. Instead, he decided to photograph the halos first. This must be one of the earliest…

In the morning of 3rd Decemeber Marko Mikkilä packed his halo gear and drove 200 kilometers to Sotkamo, where snow guns were running at the local ski resort. Once he arrived, there was fog, but it was mainly water fog…

Yesterday evening I was with my HID-lamp in Himos ski resort, Jämsä, looking for some haloes. It was full moon, which is no good combination with the lamp, but I managed to get some lamp photos when moon was behind…

This splendid display was seen last night in Sirkka, Finland. The photographer, Timo Veijalainen, tells the display lasted for about an hour after he noticed it and that the temperature was close to -10° C. Sirkka is a settlement right…

46° contact arc was suggested theoretically in 1980 by Robert Greenler. Halo enthusiast have since kept the 46° contact arc in mind, but it was not until 2006 that first photos surfaced when a well developed diamond dust display was…

This display, with sharp and rather strong Moilanen arc was photographed a week ago by Jay Brazel in Silvercreek-Granby, Colorado, U.S.A. Full sized photo ( 1 ) and more detail on SpaceWeather ( 2 ).

Circular halos on snow surface are common sights, but on ice surface halos are seen much less often. When ice surface halos do show up, they are made by oriented crystals and can be rather bright. Such was the case…