Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Ring around the Sun

Today we saw a rare site in Waco... a halo around the sun. I found it hard to get a good photo of it, but here's the best I could do.
According to articles on the Internet, the halo is formed because cirrus clouds contain ice crystals. Light is refracted when it enters the ice crystal and once again when it leaves the ice crystal.
The two refractions bend the light by 22 degrees from its original direction, producing a ring of light observed at 22 degrees from the Sun.

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