photo #5608366

Tiny prism-like ice crystals can develop in the low air to form a sparkling mist known as diamond dust. By refracting the sunlight, these crystals can cause a large ring to form around the Sun, which looks golden when the Sun is low on the horizon. This light effect is known as a 22-degree halo, but Sarah Richards (Member 5,763), whose brother David spotted this one near Lake Crystal, Minnesota, US, described it as a ‘snow globe’. The bright spots on either side of the halo and level with the Sun are known as parhelia, or sun dogs. They are another product of sunlight refracting through the microscopic prisms of ice. Reflections off the crystal surfaces cause the vertical shaft of light extending above the Sun, known as a sun pillar, as well as the horizontal band that extends through the position of the Sun and out beyond the parhelia, known as a parhelic circle. Finally, the subtly brighter patch up at the top of David’s 22-degree halo is an upper tangent arc. Though the scene looks quite calm, Sarah told us this halo display appeared in the middle of an ‘old-fashioned frigid blizzard, with winds of swirling ice and snow’. That’s what you get when you shake a snow globe.