HOP meeting 13 - 16 August 2006

Meeting of Halo Observation Project members was in Kuncice pod Ondrejnikem (Czech republic) - beautiful landscape of hills and woods. We had very nice observations of some rare halos: Parry suncave arc, 9 halos and 18 halos, on the high clouds. See PHOTO from Martin Popek. On photo from left to right: Vladimir Odvarka, Roman Manak, Lukas Kosarek, Jan Kondziolka, Martin Jankovic, Martin Popek and me. Photo was taken on meteorological station, Lysa hora.

Subhorizon diffuse arcs with Liljequist subparhelia

Francesco De Comité took this great photo from an airplane between Brussels and Madrid in 7 August 2006 at 19h31. Unfortunately no more additional photos are available from this display.

There is really well developed diffuse anthelic arcs crossing subparhelic circle. Subanthelion point is illuminated by these arcs. In this case it is clear that there is no subanthelion, since bright spot on subanthelion point has clearly square shape caused by diffuse arcs. Column ice crystals have to have good orientation.

Other very rare halo shown in this photo is broader segments on parhelic circle on both sides on subanthelion point. Unfortunately these broader segments are not very clear and they are cutted by edges of the photo. These broader brightenings are so called Liljequist subparhelia caused by plate ice crystals. Liljequist subparhelia have been photographed earlier at least by Walter Tape (see Tape's book Atmospheric Halos in page 71). Tape's display is very similar than this Francesco's display.

Since Francesco's display has rare halo made by plate ice crystals, it would be a really good case to look for still undocumented 120° subparhelia. Hunt for 120° subparhelia is still going on...

Subparhelic circle

On June/3/2006 at 20:20 CEST Susanne Danßmann observed a subparhelic circle on a flight from Berlin to Zurich. The elongated spot of light in the center of the image is likely a subanthelion. The shadow on the winglet suggests the photo was taken in direction of the antisolar point. There is no shadow of the airplane in the center of the subanthelion, because the airplane was high above the clouds.

Halo Meeting in Finland 14-16 July 2006

Nearly thirty halo enthusiasts from all around the world gathered to Artjärvi, Finland for a weekend of avid halo discussion. Apart from Finland there were participants from the USA, Japan, Germany, Sweden, Czech Republic and Netherlands. The meeting took place in URSA Astronomical Association's new observation centre. The programme for the meeting consisted of five sessions that included 14 presentations. The topics spanned from halo theory and simulation to photography and observation techniques as well as national observation networks and great historical displays. Slideshows of the very best photographs took place in the evenings and everybody feasted their eyes on literally hundreds of gorgeous halo images.

The event was well organised and everybody appeared to be having a good time. The exciting presentations, friendly atmosphere and the evening gatherings around the campfire all added to a great experience of shared enthusiasm. And to top it all of, beautiful NLC displays illuminated the skies on both nights.

We are all indebted to the people who dealt with the groundwork: Veikko, Marko and Jukka worked hard on all the arrangements while Krista and Aikku prepared the delicious meals. As soon as the gathering came to an end the plans for a new meeting had already started brewing among the participants.

Wegener anthelic arcs in Ondrejov

Two days (8.6.2006 and 9.6.2006) in Prague and near neighbourhood was very good for halos. The best halo display had Martin Nekola in Ondrejov, he was seen nice Wegener arcs in high Sun elevation (approximately 55 degrees) as big X on anthelion side of Sun. Web site of some next Martin´s halo photos is here.

World database of rare halos

For all rare halos of the world is database now. The most contribution to database is from Finnish, Czech and German observing networks, and from acouple of active observers from USA. You can search the database in four ways: all observations, name of observer, country of observation and name of halo.


You visit: http://www.halo.astronomie.cz/database.php

Bottlinger's rings from airplane

To help overcome our dearth of haloes, here is another archive picture. It was taken in the morning over Iberian Peninsula in April 1997 by Frank Wächter using a 35mm lens. It shows elliptical haloes around the subsun called Bottlinger's rings.