PRAYAGRAJ: Locals of Sangam city were in for a celestial treat on Friday when the sun was encircled by a multi-coloured ring called Sun halo.
The phenomenon was first spotted around 11:30am and soon became a talk of the town with people capturing the ‘beautiful rainbow-like ring around the sun’ on their phone cameras.
Within no time, social media was flooded with pictures and videos of the event.
“We have seen rainbows in the sky but never around the Sun and that too when there were no signs of rain. Altogether, it was a different experience which comes once in a lifetime,” said Swati, a class 10 student of the city.
Head of the department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, at Allahabd University prof Jayant Pati said: “Sun Halo is a perfect 22-degree rainbow ring formation around the Sun caused due to the dispersion of light, in this case sun rays, through hexagonal ice crystals that float in the upper-level cirrus clouds. The cirrus clouds contain millions of such tiny ice crystals which deflect or refract and split the white light passing through them to give an impression of a rainbow-coloured ring.”
He added that this is taught to students in the class and today was a perfect opportunity for them to see it live.
Pati said this can also occur around the moon and then it is called ‘moon halo’.
Former head of the department of Geography, AU, prof AR Siddiqui said: “The only worrying factor is that occurrence of Sun or Moon Halo means that either there is a storm in the vicinity of the place or might hit that area in the next 24 hours or so.”
The phenomenon was first spotted around 11:30am and soon became a talk of the town with people capturing the ‘beautiful rainbow-like ring around the sun’ on their phone cameras.
Within no time, social media was flooded with pictures and videos of the event.
“We have seen rainbows in the sky but never around the Sun and that too when there were no signs of rain. Altogether, it was a different experience which comes once in a lifetime,” said Swati, a class 10 student of the city.
Head of the department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, at Allahabd University prof Jayant Pati said: “Sun Halo is a perfect 22-degree rainbow ring formation around the Sun caused due to the dispersion of light, in this case sun rays, through hexagonal ice crystals that float in the upper-level cirrus clouds. The cirrus clouds contain millions of such tiny ice crystals which deflect or refract and split the white light passing through them to give an impression of a rainbow-coloured ring.”
He added that this is taught to students in the class and today was a perfect opportunity for them to see it live.
Pati said this can also occur around the moon and then it is called ‘moon halo’.
Former head of the department of Geography, AU, prof AR Siddiqui said: “The only worrying factor is that occurrence of Sun or Moon Halo means that either there is a storm in the vicinity of the place or might hit that area in the next 24 hours or so.”