Halo's, Arc's & Doggies!

[JB80]

Well after a day of high whispy cloud where I got no imaging in and it's not looking good for tonight either I was treated to an amazing display of solar phenomena of the like I have never seen before. It truly was spectacular and very dynamic.

It started off with me noticing the standard solar halo effect and quickly noticed the sun dogs either side of it.

However after a few minutes I noticed an inverted arc forming at the top of the halo which blew me away as I had never witnessed that before.

Still as I cast my eye's further up there was a much larger and more colourful second inverted arc( possibly a circumzenithal arc?)

This was quite a show I was seeing, I was thrilled.

I then looked out further to my left and found a second halo that faintly stretched from the very top arc down to the ground.

Awesome!

Now I'm sorry for the pics as I used my sons point and shoot so they are not the best and the sheer scale of this event meant that I could not capture it in one shot but I have included a sketch of what I was seeing(thought about posting that in the sketching section ) so that may help a little.

I'm also not convinced on just what exact types of arcs I was seeing whether they are superlateral, upper tangent, etc... maybe some body will know?

The halo, dogs and faint arc

The two arcs

This is the sketch

The secondary Halo stretching from the top arc, far left on the sketch.

[Graham Darke]

Fab! There's been a lot of atmospheric stuff going on this week.

[JB80]

Thanks Graham!