Elliptical halo in Diamond Dust

At 13.03.2006 accumulate a diamond dust on the 1835m high top of the German mount Wendelstein above a 1400m high cloud layer, which consists of tiny little snowstars and very long ice columns.

Therein forms out a bright glittering lower sun pillar with subsun. After a half an hour both halo kinds weaken clearly, but in return there accumulate two elliptical rings around the sun, before the whole halo spook was disappeared. The diamond dust was in the air all over the day, but no halos were observably anymore.

Light pillars in Finland

These light pillars were seen on the night of 8/9 March 2006 in Lappeenranta. The spot-like appearance is because the majority of the plate like ice crystals reflecting the lamp light are consentrated in a layer above the ground. Photo was taken by Tomppa Jurvanen. More of his scenes from the same display: 1, 2, 3

Venus Pillar and Star Pillars

Neither sun pillar nor moon pillar is not a rare halo.
But a "venus pillar" is hardly found.
The photo was taken by Myao (his handle), who was searching for Comet Pojmanski.
It was before dawn of Mar 4, 2006, in Tsukuba, Japan.
He also observed short "star pillars"!
A close-up image can be seen in his site (in Japanese).

Good display in Finland

This halo complex was seen in Kajaani on 26. February 2006. The photo was taken by Kalevi Härkönen. For more see here.

Halo meeting in Finland

Coming summer, on the weekend of 14-16 July there will be a meeting for halo and other atmospheric optics enthusiasts in Finland. The location is the Artjärvi observatory in Southern Finland countryside. In the program there will be talks, watching people's photos and just hanging around with each other.

Many Finns and some foregin participants have already signed in. We hope to get wide participation from abroad. The official program will be kept in English language. If you are interested to come, please contact me at the address found here and I will tell more details about the meeting.

(The picture shows odd radius halos from last summer in Eastern Finland)

Tranquility of simple winter Moon halo

With all the bright complex displays and rare halos prensented here, it's possible to forget that even simple display can be a beautiful sight. Marko Mikkilä photographed this 22° halo from his backyard a couple of days before last full moon.

In moon halo photos sky tend become smooth as clouds move during exposure. Here smoothness is further enhanced by stacking seven individual shots.

Rare Halos in Japan

Hello from Japan.
In my web site, I have a log of halos and atmospheric optical phenomena observations.
Many (Japanese) people send me their observations,
from ordinal ones like 22-degree halo to very rare ones.


Here I introduce two cases of odd radius halos in my site.
I'm sorry that descriptions in the pages are written in Japanese,
but you can see photos of halo displays anyway.

May 17, 2005, Odd Radius Halos in Yanai (top image of this article)
Aug 16, 2004, Odd Radius Halos in Shiojiri, Kanazawa, Tokyo, Gifu