22 Degree Halo Over Zawiercie, Poland
October 12, 2016
Photographer: Michał Kurzak
Summary Authors: Michał Kurzak; Jim Foster
The impressive solar halo featured above was photographed from Zawiercie, Poland. Notice that this halo is approximately 22 degrees (your fist held at arm's length is about 10 degrees) from the Sun itself. Halos such as this result when sunlight refracts through the randomly oriented ice crystals that compose cirrus clouds. Though halos can be vibrant, because they're actually composed of myriad overlapping halos their colors are more muted than some other ice crystal-generated arcs, circumzenithal arcs for instance, and are much less colorful than rainbows. Also, the order of colors in ice halos are reversed from the colors in a rainbow -- the red color in a halo is closest to the solar disk. Make sure to always protect your eyes anytime you look in the direction of the Sun. Photo taken on March 14, 2016.
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