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Bengaluru Residents Delighted To Spot Rainbow-colored Sun Halo

Mon 24 May 2021    
EcoBalance
| 2 min read

Bengaluru: An iridescent halo was spotted around the sun in the skies over Bengaluru, mid-morning Monday. Known as a sun halo, it appears like a circular rainbow around the sun, visible bright during the day.

The circular rainbow around the sun was visible in Bengaluru, India on 24th May 2021, many took to social media to share pictures of the sun.

Twitterati and celebs took this opportunity to showcase their nature photography skills and flooded social media with pictures of the beautiful natural phenomena of Sun Halo, from the teach city of India.

A 22° halo is an optical phenomenon that belongs to the family of ice-crystal halos. Its form is a ring with an apparent radius of approximately 22° around the Sun or Moon. When visible around the Moon, it is called a moon ring or winter halo. It forms as direct sunlight or moonlight is refracted in millions of hexagonal ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere.

While talking to The Brew, Dubai Astronomy Group CEO, Hasan Al Hariri said, Sun Halo forms due to the existence of moisture at very high level in the air. At that level moisture convert to become very minute ice crystal and this ice crystal behaves like prism and create this colorful reflective lights. This happens only when situated moisture is at very high level, where the temperature is very low, instead of being cloud they scattered around and crystalized. These crystals bend the lights in this colorful manner. This phenomena is very common and happens in every part of the world. It happens mostly in night that is called moon halo. In UAE we witnessed moon halo many times.       

As per earthsky.org, these clouds contain millions of tiny ice crystals. The halos you see are caused by both refraction, or splitting of light, and also by reflection, or glints of light from these ice crystals. The crystals have to be oriented and positioned just so with respect to your eye, in order for the halo to appear. That’s why, like rainbows, halos around the sun – or moon – are personal. Everyone sees their own particular halo, made by their own particular ice crystals, which are different from the ice crystals making the halo of the person standing next to you.

The rainbow was visible to most residents in the city as Bengaluru had a pretty clear sky on Monday.

earthsky.org says that, If you see a Sun halo, notice this! Because moonlight isn’t very bright, lunar halos are mostly colorless, but you might notice redder on the inside and bluer on the outside of the halo. These colors are more noticeable in halos around the sun. If you do see a halo around the moon or sun, notice that the inner edge is sharp, while the outer edge is more diffuse. Also, notice that the sky surrounding the halo is darker than the rest of the sky.


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