• Infralateral arc... quite rare

Circumscribed and Infralateral

This afternoon, while driving home from church, I glanced up and was delighted to see a very intense halo around the sun. The intensity of the halo indicated that perhaps other halos might be present, so I pulled over (something that my wife has come to accept) and jumped out to see. I was even more delighted to see a tinge of red and green in the cirrus below the sun, and thought that it must be a circumhorizon arc. I've never seen a CHA, so I nearly jumped out of my shoes to get my camera and capture it.

When I got home and processed the shots, I could see that the brilliant halo as a circumscribed halo. Upon further examination and research, I concluded that the tinge of color in the clouds is not a CHA, but rather an even more rare Infralateral Arc. Intense image processing shows the arc to be curving upwards, rather than the flat CHA, consistent with an Infralateral. I'm just tickled to add this shot to my collection of atmospheric optics pictures!

Comments and faves

  1. kstoon (37 months ago | reply)

    wow, that's a good one! you don't have to answer, but were pants still dry after getting this shot? ;-)

  2. marco battistutta (37 months ago | reply)

    Very good display!!
    I saw a CHA once, but like 80% of the times I see something interesting in the sky, my camera is at home to collect dust...

  3. 0olong (37 months ago | reply)

    Wonderful capture!

  4. crowt59 (37 months ago | reply)

    Now this is wild!!

  5. thejasonhowell (37 months ago | reply)

    I'm glad someone got a picture of this because it was an amazing sight.

  6. David Lee Tiller (36 months ago | reply)

    AWESOME capture Tim. Oh you so rock! Peace David

  7. Normans photos (11 months ago | reply)

    Lovely Circumscribed halo BUT I can't see the Infralateral arc. How can you distinguish it from the clouds which are quite dense there?

keyboard shortcuts: previous photo next photo L view in light box F favorite < scroll film strip left > scroll film strip right ? show all shortcuts