Stunningly complex sun halo snapped above Yellowknife, Canada

Space Weather
Thu, 06 Sep 2018 06:34 UTC

© Stephen Bedingfield

As summer comes to an end in Arctic Canada, there's a chill in the air heralding the approach of autumn. The change of seasons is also changing the morning sun, which is increasingly attended by beautiful ice halos. Yesterday, Stephen Bedingfield photographed this sunrise display from Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories:

© Stephen Bedingfield

The luminous forms are caused by sunlight shining through icy crystals in cirrus clouds. Usually ice halos are simple, like a solitary pillar or an uncomplicated ring. In this case, however, a complex assortment of halos surrounded the sun. There was an upper and a lower tangent arc, a Parry arc, an infralateral arc, a parhelic circle, a 22-degree halo, and a pair of sundogs. Confused? Here's a finder chart.

The variety of halos Bedingfield witnessed was caused by a corresponding variety of ice crystals tumbling through the northern morning air. Stay tuned for more of these as the icy season begins.

© Stephen Bedingfield

Comment: The ever increasing sightings of sun halos, sun flashes; triple, twinned and arctic rainbows, moonbows; hole punch, mammatus, iridescent, and even unexplained cloud formations; the erratic behaviour of noctilucent clouds; rare colours of aurora, as well as the recently documented atmospheric phenomena STEVE; red sprites, blue jets - and on and on; our atmosphere is changing dramatically and this is clear from the signs in the sky. See:

• Chemtrails? Contrails? Strange Skies
• Chemtrails, Disinformation and the Sixth Extinction
• 'Rare and remarkable' activity detected on Earth during recent geomagnetic storm

For more, check out SOTT radio's: Behind the Headlines: Earth changes in an electric universe: Is climate change really man-made?