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Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Halos and clouds

 
This rather bright halo appeared around the Sun in the sky over Tucson today. It was about as bright a halo as I've seen - quite spectacular and lasted at least several hours. This image was taken with the kit lens on my 20D at 18mm focal length with an exposure of 1/5000 seconds at f/8, ISO 400. Posted by Picasa

5 comments:

Richard said...

Nice occulting disk. Did you see the 9 degree and 46 degree halos? I don't see the 9 in your shot. Maybe those crystals moved in before or after this shot. I got all three halo on my images.

Jim said...

I didn't see the 9 degree. The occulting disk is one of the lights out in front of the Planetarium. I'd used palm trees and the cyprus trees out in front of the lab as well, but you're right, this one works well.

Jim said...

Oh, forgot - I saw a hint of the 46 degree halo, but it wasn't terribly convincing.

Kevin said...

Hey, I found your picture on google - I was in Guadelupe, Mexico on Sunday, June 25, 2006 and I saw the exact same thing between 10 AM and 1 PM, only it was brighter. Weirdest thing ever. Did you actually see this two days later on the 27th?

- Kevin, Gamaliel87@netzero.com

Jim said...

Thanks for the note Kevin. Halos and other types of arcs and so on are actually quite common and only require the right type of cloud and the sun (or even the Moon) in the right place to be seen. If you can find it, I'd recommend a book called "Color and Light in Nature" by Lynch and Livingston which describes all sorts of excellent things you can see in the sky.