Parhelia Phenomena Nr2

tobbsman · Joined: 25 Jul 2008 Posts: 2578 Location: Austria

I watched for second time a parhelia (sun dog) phenomena this week:

see here great information a parhelia:
http://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/44pars.htm

here the shots again from my first time (autumn):

Cheers
Tobias

RenseH · Expire: 2013-01-14

Wow Tobias, great shots! That second one is outstanding, it just blows me away.... Cool

Himself · Expire: 2013-05-30

That`s an omen.
The end of the world is close.

Mad

RenseH · Expire: 2013-01-14

tobbsman · Joined: 25 Jul 2008 Posts: 2578 Location: Austria

Thanks for the optimistic comments, merry christmas guys Laughing

Cheers
Tobias

RenseH · Expire: 2013-01-14

Whoehahahahaaa!

mikenco · Joined: 25 Nov 2010 Posts: 80

A 'Sundog'?

Is this what this is that I took a pic earlier this year?

I did wonder.. My wife who is a bit of a weather nut, said it wasn't a rainbow and was probably a "Sundog" (I've never heard of the name).

Orio · Expire: 2012-12-04

All very strange. I never saw anything like that. Thanks for sharing.

tobbsman · Joined: 25 Jul 2008 Posts: 2578 Location: Austria

mikenco, I don't know what it is that your photograph shows.
A specialist should have a look at it to tell if it is a sun dog.

How was the temerature that day, do you remember ?
Because that sundog-halos have something to do with ice crystals in the air ... http://www.atoptics.co.uk/halosim.htm

Cheers
Tobias

JWH · Joined: 26 Aug 2009 Posts: 120 Location: Netherlands

@Tobbsman: Sundogs are more regular than you might think. I'm a hobby meteorologist so I pay more attention to the skies than avarage, but I see them atleast once a week. They are also fairly predictable.

The 1st photo also shows a faint part of the arc of the halo where the sundogs are part of at both sides of the sun.

The 2nd photo however gets more interesting. You see a very faint sundog at the left but if you look closely you see a bright arc go from left to right going through the sundog in the cloud. This is part of the Parhelic circle. Which is a more rare phenomena. It's a white/faint circle that goes through the whole sky getting larger the lower the sun is. I've only seen it complete twice but seen fractions of it quite often, even more interesting is a 220 degrees sundog that appears in a parhelic circle.

Anyhow there are alot more optics than you can imagine, but best looking one being a Circumzenithal Arc, which is often very bright.

Just try to look every now and then when you see cirrus ( ice ) clouds like on those photos.

@Mikenco: Your photo shows a part of a rainbow.

tobbsman · Joined: 25 Jul 2008 Posts: 2578 Location: Austria

Thanks so much JWH for your information!
Since I saw the halos for the first time I was looking much more and more consciously to the skys. And will definitly do it more often from now on, because I am very interested in this kind of phenomena.

Do you have some photographs from your own to share?

Cheers
Tobias

JWH · Joined: 26 Aug 2009 Posts: 120 Location: Netherlands

There really is alot to see up there. Considering your location you also got a decent chance of seeing Iridescence in the skies and ofcourse the gorgeous orographical ( well mostly ) formed Lenticular Clouds.

I got plenty of photos of optical phenomena but none of really high quality ( and with MF Razz

) but here's a couple.

The 1st shows a 'normal' Halo formed on cirrus.

The 2nd is the rare 220 degrees Sundog formed on a Parhelic circle. The sun was quite high in the sky at that point but sadly just not enough to fit the whole circle in a 10mm frame.

The 3rd is another halo, but this time formed around the Moon.

mikenco · Joined: 25 Nov 2010 Posts: 80