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Posted on 03/24/2009 6:06:29 PM PDT by TaraP
On March 20th, Danish photographer Jesper Gronne looked up at the clouds and saw not just one or two but three concentric halos around the sun. Before the rare display could fade, he grabbed his camera (a Canon 5D) and snapped more than 20 pictures. Stacking the images on his computer yielded a pin-up quality record of the event: I never expected to see such a rich variety of ice halos here in lowland Denmark--and it's not even winter anymore!" he marveled.
What could cause such an apparition? Atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley explains: "We can work outwards from the sun to explore the mysteries of this display. The first ring is an exceptionally bright and rare 9-degree halo made by tumbling pyramidal ice crystals in the clouds. The same crystals also produced displays on the other side of the North Sea the night before. The inner halo's bright upper and lower patches could be something very rare indeed, plate arcs from aligned pyramids. But we must be cautious, they could just be spots of thicker cloud!"
"The next bright ring is at first sight the common 22-degree halo but with so many pyramidal crystals about it could also be a combination of other pyramidal halo rings. There are hints too of 18 degree pyramidal halos inside it. At least the two sundogs are familiar sights!"
"Farther from the sun at top is another familiar halo, the ‘smile-in the-sky' circumzenithal arc made from ordinary ice plates. But the one touching it and curving downwards is another mystery. We know it is either a supralateral arc or a 46 degree halo. But if a supralateral, we would expect an upper tangent arc from the same column crystals – there is none. If a 46 degree halo then the inner 22 degree ring should be much brighter! Displays like this one are fascinating and need long studies of many photos to unravel and be sure of their secrets."
Beautiful. And I love the horizon with the little house. Makes you think of how small we all really are in this universe.
Could it be one of the Seven Signs?
Weather modifation
http://www.naiwmc.org/4dcgi/GetSubCategoryRecord/Meetings/Presentations
Cloud seeding, often called weather modification, is not something most people know much about, yet it is a multi-million dollar industry in the Western United States. This document addresses the most common questions about the technology and provides the interested reader with some ideas where more information can be found.
please see this website for an explanation and a lot of other neat things.
http://www.atoptics.co.uk/
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Thanks for the ping. It’s not really “geological”, but it’s a pretty interesting picture!
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