Halo ( optical phenomenon ) - wikipedia Halo ( optical phenomenon ) For other uses, see Halo ( disambiguation ). This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( September 2014 ) A 22 ° halo around the sun as viewed in the sky over Annapurna Base Camp, Annapurna, Nepal From top to bottom : A circumzenithal arc, supralateral arc, Parry arc, upper tangent arc, and 22 ° halo Halo ( from Greek ἅλως, halōs ) is the name for a family of optical phenomena produced by light interacting with ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere. Halos can have many forms, ranging from colored or white rings to arcs and spots in the sky. Many of these are near the Sun or Moon, but others occur elsewhere or even in the opposite part of the sky. Among the best known halo types are the circular halo ( properly called the 22 ° halo ), light pillars and sun dogs, but there are many more ; some of them fairly common, others ( extremely ) rare. The ice crystals responsible for halos are typically suspended in cirrus or cirrostratus clouds high ( 5 -- 10 km, or 3 -- 6 miles ) in the upper troposphere, but in cold weather they can also float near the ground, in which case they are referred to as diamond dust. The particular shape and orientation of the crystals are responsible for the type of halo observed. Light is reflected and refracted by the ice crystals and may split up into colors because of dispersion. The crystals behave like prisms and mirrors, refracting and reflecting light between their faces, sending shafts of light in particular directions. Atmospheric phenomena such as halos were used as part of weather lore as an empirical means of weather forecasting before meteorology was developed. They often do mean that rain is going to fall within the next 24 hours as the cirrostratus clouds that cause them can signify an approaching frontal system. Other common optical phenomena involving water droplets rather than ice crystals include the glory and the rainbow. Contents 1 History 2 Light pillar 3 Circular halo 4 Bottlinger 's ring 5 Other names 6 Artificial halos 6.1 Analogous refraction approach 6.2 Chemical approaches 6.3 Mechanical approaches 6.3. 1 Single axis 6.3. 2 Two axes 6.3. 3 Three axes 7 Gallery 8 See also 9 References 10 External links History While Aristotle had mentioned halos and parhelia, in antiquity, the first European descriptions of complex displays were those of Christoph Scheiner in Rome ( circa 1630 ), Hevelius in Danzig ( 1661 ), and Tobias Lowitz in St Petersburg ( c. 1794 ). Chinese observers had recorded these for centuries, the first reference being a section of the `` Official History of the Chin Dynasty '' ( Chin Shu ) in 637, on the `` Ten Haloes '', giving technical terms for 26 solar halo phenomena. Light pillar Main article : Light pillar A light pillar, or sun pillar, appears as a vertical pillar or column of light rising from the sun near sunset or sunrise, though it can appear below the sun, particularly if the observer is at a high elevation or altitude. Hexagonal plate - and column - shaped ice crystals cause the phenomenon. Plate crystals generally cause pillars only when the sun is within 6 degrees of the horizon, or below it ; column crystals can cause a pillar when the sun is as high as 20 degrees above the horizon. The crystals tend to orient themselves near - horizontally as they fall or float through the air, and the width and visibility of a sun pillar depend on crystal alignment. Light pillars can also form around the moon, and around street lights or other bright lights. Pillars forming from ground - based light sources may appear much taller than those associated with the sun or moon. Since the observer is closer to the light source, crystal orientation matters less in the formation of these pillars. Circular halo Further information : 22 ° halo and 46 ° halo Among the best - known halos is the 22 ° halo, often just called `` halo '', which appears as a large ring around the Sun or Moon with a radius of about 22 ° ( roughly the width of an outstretched hand at arm 's length ). The ice crystals that cause the 22 ° halo are oriented semi-randomly in the atmosphere, in contrast to the horizontal orientation required for some other halos such as sun dogs and light pillars. As a result of the optical properties of the ice crystals involved, no light is reflected towards the inside of the ring, leaving the sky noticeably darker than the sky around it, and giving it the impression of a `` hole in the sky ''. The 22 ° halo is not to be confused with the corona, which is a different optical phenomenon caused by water droplets rather than ice crystals, and which has the appearance of a multicolored disk rather than a ring. Other haloes can form at 46 ° to the sun, or at the horizon, or around the zenith, and can appear as full haloes or incomplete arcs. Bottlinger 's ring A Bottlinger 's ring is a rare type of halo that is elliptical instead of circular. It has a small diameter, which makes it very difficult to see in the Sun 's glare and more likely to be spotted around the dimmer Subsun, often seen from mountain tops or airplanes. Bottlinger 's rings are not well understood yet. It is suggested that they are formed by very flat pyramidal ice crystals with faces at uncommonly low angles, suspended horizontally in the atmosphere. These precise and physically problematic requirements would explain why the halo is very rare. Other names In the Anglo - Cornish dialect of English, a halo round the sun or the moon is called a cock 's eye and is a token of bad weather. The term is related to the Breton word kog - heol ( sun cock ) which has the same meaning. In Nepal, the halo round the sun is called Indrasabha with a connotation of the assembly court of Lord Indra -- the Hindu god of lightning, thunder and rain. Artificial halos The natural phenomena may be reproduced artificially by several means. Firstly, by computer simulations, or secondly by experimental means. Regarding the latter, one may either take a single crystal and rotate it around the appropriate axis / axes, or take a chemical approach. A still further and more indirect experimental approach is to find analogous refraction geometries. Analogous refraction approach Analogous refraction demonstration experiment for the Circumzenithal Arc. Here, it is mistakenly labelled as an artificial rainbow in Gilberts book This approach employs the fact that in some cases the average geometry of refraction through an ice crystal may be imitated / mimicked via the refraction through another geometrical object. In this way, the Circumzenithal arc, the Circumhorizontal arc and the suncave Parry arcs may be recreated by refraction through rotationally symmetric ( i.e. non-prismatic ) static bodies. A particularly simple table - top experiment reproduces artificially the colorful circumzenithal and circumhorizontal arcs using a water glass only. The refraction through the cylinder of water turns out to be ( almost ) identical to the rotationally averaged refraction through an upright hexagonal ice crystal / plate - oriented crystals, thereby creating vividly colored circumzenithal and the circumhorizontal arcs. In fact, the water glass experiment is often confused as representing a rainbow and has been around at least since 1920. Chemical approaches The earliest chemical recipes to generate artificial halos has been put forward by Brewster and studied further by A. Cornu in 1889. The idea was to generate crystals by precipitation of a salt solution. The innumerable small crystals hereby generated will then, upon illumination with light, cause halos corresponding to the particular crystal geometry and the orientation / alignment. Several recipes exist and continue to be discovered. Rings are a common outcome of such experiments. But also Parry arcs have been artificially produced in this way. Mechanical approaches Single axis The earliest experimental studies on halo phenomena have been attributed to Auguste Bravais in 1847. Bravais used an equilateral glass prism which he spun around its vertical axis. When illuminated by parallel white light, this produced an artificial Parhelic circle and many of the embedded parhelia. Similarly, A. Wegener used hexagonal rotating crystals to produce artificial subparhelia. In a more recent version of this experiment, many more embedded parhelia have been found using commercially available hexagonal BK7 glass crystals. Simple experiments like these can be used for educational purposes and demonstration experiments. Unfortunately, using glass crystals one can not reproduce the circumzenithal arc or the circumhorizontal arc due to total internal reflections preventing the required ray - paths when n < 2 ( displaystyle n < ( sqrt ( 2 ) ) ). Even earlier than Bravais, the Italian scientist F. Venturi experimented with pointed water - filled prisms to demonstrate the circumzenithal arc. However, this explanation was replaced later by the CZA 's correct explanation by Bravais. Artificial Halo projected on a spherical screen. Visible are : Tangential arcs, Parry arcs, ( sub ) parhelia, parhelic circle, heliac arcs Artificial ice crystals have been employed to create halos which are otherwise unattainable in the mechanical approach via the use of glass crystals, e.g. circumzenithal and circumhorizontal arcs. The use of ice crystals ensures that the generated halos have the same angular coordinates as the natural phenomena. Other crystals such as NaF also have a refractive index close to ice and have been used in the past. Two axes In order to produce artificial halos such as the tangent arcs or the circumscribed halo one should rotate a single columnar hexagonal crystal about 2 axes. Similarly, the Lowitz arcs can be created by rotating a single plate crystal about two axes. This can be done by engineered halo machines. The first such machine was constructed in 2003 ; several more followed. Putting such machines inside spherical projection screens, and by the principle of the so - called sky transform, the analogy is nearly perfect. A realization using micro-versions of the aforementioned machines produces authentic distortion - free projections of such complex artificial halos. Finally, superposition of several images and projections produced by such halo machines may be combined to create a single image. The resulting superposition image is then a representation of complex natural halo displays containing many different orientation sets of ice prisms. Three axes The experimental reproduction of circular halos is the most difficult using a single crystal only, while it is the simplest and typically achieved one using chemical recipes. Using a single crystal, one needs to realize all possible 3D orientations of the crystal. This has recently been achieved by two approaches. The first one using pneumatics and a sophisticated rigging, and a second one using an Arduino - based random walk machine which stochastically reorients a crystal embedded in a transparent thin - walled sphere. Gallery 360 deg Solar Halo, Madrid 25 - 3 - 2017 Solar Halo, Madrid 25 - 3 - 2017, detail Circumscribed halo around the sun, taken on Punta Alta, Argentina, captured on January 28, 2013 at 11 : 58 am A circumscribed halo ( outer ring, partially visible on the bottom left and top left / right ) together with a 22 ° halo ( inner ring ) Sun pillar in San Francisco 22 ° halo around the Sun, above PT Semen Padang building at Padang, Indonesia, October 2, 2009, at 11 : 09 am Sun dogs and possible Sun pillar in Hesse, August 12, 2012. Atmospheric temperatures responsible for ice crystals around 22 ° halo, as viewed through a thermal camera ( ° C ). The halo itself is not present in the thermal spectrum. The sun is partially visible at the top of the image. Complex halo display ( 22 ° halo, sun dogs, upper tangent arc, upper and lower Sun pillar, parhelic circle, supralateral arc ) observed in Les Ménuires ( elevation ~ 2200 metres ), Rhone - Alpes, France on January 23, 2015, during sunset at 16 : 30 Lunar halo viewed from London, UK on Christmas Eve ( 24 December ) 2015. Shot with a Nikon D3S and a Nikkor 20 mm f / 1.8 G lens. 22 ° halo around the sun as viewed from Kolkata, West Bengal, India on April 30, 2016, at about 12 : 00 pm Sun with Sun dogs at Hoherodskopf / Germany - July 15, 2017. See also 22 ° halo 46 ° halo 120 ° parhelion Anthelion Atmospheric optics Circumhorizontal arc Circumscribed halo Circumzenithal arc Corona Diamond dust False sunrise Glory Green flash Heiligenschein Infralateral arc Kern arc Light pillar Liljequist parhelion Lower tangent arc Parhelic circle Parry arc Rainbow Subhelic arc Subparhelic circle Subsun Sun dog Supralateral arc Upper tangent arc References Jump up ^ Harper, Douglas. `` halo ''. Online Etymology Dictionary. ἅλως. Liddell, Henry George ; Scott, Robert ; A Greek -- English Lexicon at the Perseus Project. Jump up ^ Ho Ping - Yu, Joseph Needham Ancient Chinese Observations of Solar Haloes and Parhelia Weather April 1959 ( vol14, issue 4 ) p124 - 134 Jump up ^ `` '' Disk with a hole '' in the sky ``. Atmospheric Optics. Retrieved 3 August 2016. Jump up ^ Les Cowley. `` Bottlinger 's Ring ''. Atmospheric Optics. Retrieved 2017 - 06 - 26. Jump up ^ Nance, Robert Morton ; Pool, P.A.S. ( 1963 ). A Glossary of Cornish Sea - Words. Cornwall : Federation of Old Cornwall Societies. p. 61. Jump up ^ `` Nepal skies graced with extraordinary ' circular rainbow ' halo around sun ''. The Himalayan Times. 9 July 2015. Retrieved 3 August 2016. Jump up ^ HaloSim3 by Les Cowley and Michael Schroeder link Jump up ^ HaloPoint 2.0 link ^ Jump up to : `` Artificial circumzenithal and circumhorizontal arcs '', M. Selmke and S. Selmke, American Journal of Physics ( Am. J. Phys. ) Vol 85 ( 8 ), p. 575 - 581 link ^ Jump up to : Gilbert light experiments for boys -- ( 1920 ), p. 98, Experiment No. 94 link Jump up ^ `` Sur la reproduction artificielle des halos et des cercles parh eliques '', Comtes Rendus Ac. Paris 108, 429 -- 433, A. Cornu, 1889. ^ Jump up to : `` Laboratory experiments in atmospheric optics '', Opt. Express 37 ( 9 ), 1557 -- 1568, M. Vollmer and R. Tammer, 1998. link Jump up ^ `` Tabletop divergent - light halos '', Physics Education 42 ( 6 ), L. Gisle and J. O Mattsson, 2007. link Jump up ^ Z. Ulanowski, `` Ice analog halos, '' Appl. Optics 44 ( 27 ), 5754 -- 5758, 2005. link Jump up ^ M. Élie de Beaumont, Memoir of Auguste Bravais ( Smithsonian Institution, Washington, 1869 ) ^ Jump up to : `` Mémoire sur les halos et les phénomènes optiques qui les accompagnent '', 1847, J. de l'École Royale Polytechnique 31 ( 18 ), p. 1 - 270, § XXIV -- Reproduction artificielle des phénomènes optiques dus à des prismes à axe vertical, Figures : PL I : Fig. 48, PL II : Fig : 49 - 54. Jump up ^ `` Die Nebensonnen unter dem Horizont, '' Meteorol. Z. 34 -- 52 ( 8 / 9 ), 295 -- 298, A. Wegner, 1917. Jump up ^ Homogenizing Light rods / Light pipes link Jump up ^ `` Intensity distribution of the parhelic circle and embedded parhelia at zero solar elevation : theory and experiments '', Applied Optics ( Appl. Opt. ), Vol. 54, Issue 22, 6608 - 6615, S. Borchardt and M. Selmke, 2015. link ^ Jump up to : `` Artificial Halos '', American Journal of Physics ( Am. J. Phys. ), Vol. 83 ( 9 ), 751 - 760, M. Selmke, 2015. link Jump up ^ F. Venturi, `` Commentarii sopra ottica '', p. 219, Tav VIII, Fig 17, arc : PGQ, Fig 27, p. 213. Jump up ^ `` Physikalisches Wörterbuch '', neu bearbeitet von Brandes. Gmelin. Horner. Muncke. Pfaff, p. 494, ( 1 ) ^ Jump up to : Article with images on BoredPanda : Spherical projection screen for artificial halos ^ Jump up to : `` Complex artificial halos for the classroom '', American Journal of Physics ( Am. J. Phys. ), Vol. 84 ( 7 ), 561 - 564, M. Selmke and S. Selmke, 2016. link Jump up ^ Homepage : Arbeitskreis Meteore e.V. link Jump up ^ `` An Analog Light Scattering Experiment of Hexagonal Icelike Particles. Part II : Experimental and Theoretical Results '', JOURNAL OF THE ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES, Vol. 56, B. Barkey, K.N. Liou, Y. Takano, W. Gellerman, P. Sokolkly, 1999. Jump up ^ `` Halo and mirage demonstrations in atmospheric optics, '' Appl. Opt. 42 ( 3 ), 394 - 398, M. Vollmer and R. Greenler, 2003. link ^ Jump up to : `` Artificially generated halos : rotating sample crystals around various axes '', Applied Optics Vol. 54, Issue 4, pp. B97 - B106, Michael Großmann, Klaus - Peter Möllmann, and Michael Vollmer, 2015. link Jump up ^ `` Sky Transform '' on atoptics.co.uk : link External links Wikimedia Commons has media related to Halo. Halo explanations and image galleries at Atmospheric Optics Meteoros AKM -- Halo explanations and image galleries Halo reports of interesting halo observations around the World Southern Hemisphere Halo and other atmospheric phenomena Halo in Chisinau Moldova ( photo and video ) Walter Tape & Jarmo Moilanen, Atmospheric Halos and the Search for Angle x ( free e-book ) Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Halo_(optical_phenomenon)&oldid=798191259 '' Categories : Atmospheric optical phenomena Hidden categories : Articles containing Ancient Greek - language text Articles needing additional references from September 2014 All articles needing additional references Talk Contents About Wikipedia Azərbaycanca Беларуская Български Català Čeština Dansk Deutsch Eesti Ελληνικά Español Esperanto Euskara فارسی Français 한국어 Հայերեն हिन्दी Hrvatski Ido Bahasa Indonesia Italiano עברית Қазақша Latina Latviešu Lietuvių Magyar Bahasa Melayu Nederlands 日本 語 Norsk Norsk nynorsk Oʻzbekcha / ўзбекча Polski Português Русский Simple English Slovenčina Slovenščina Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски Basa Sunda Suomi Svenska தமிழ் Татарча / tatarça ไทย Українська 中文 Edit links This page was last edited on 31 August 2017, at 13 : 56. 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Question: sun's halo is produced by the refraction of light in
Answer: ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere