The phone rang at Pauli Hänninen’s house, it was a friend telling them to go outside and look up at the sky. So Paul and his family went outside…This is what they saw.
These are sun halos or 22 degree halos, which are produced by the ice crystals in cirrostratus clouds. The crystals bend direct sunlight, projecting it elsewhere into the sky, and at a certain angle -22 degrees – a halo can be seen around the sun.
Paul described that night in his village in Finland, “It was cold and very foggy, the temperature was around -10 degrees Celsius. When the clouds began to break, there were rainbow colors in the sky and a halo spanning 360 degrees! It was worth taking a picture or two.”
Can you imagine seeing this in the sky?
Fogbows are formed in the same way as rainbows in that light is reflected inside tiny water droplets and emerges to form a large circle or arc of approximately 42°C centred on the antisolar point, opposite the sun.
Fogbows are also called white rainbows, cloudbows, or rainbow ghosts.
Fogbow colours are whiteish because the fogbows formed in each colour overlap considerably. Sometimes the inner and outer edges show faint bluish and reddish tinges. The actual colours are a result of the actual size of the water droplets.
When seen from within cloud or fog, the fogbow may be a partial or full circle.
