Solar halo, January 30, 2016

While I was waiting for my friend to pick me up for our trip to Bloomsburg to see Romeo and Juliet, I happened to look up and see...this.

Halos around the Sun aren't that uncommon. They just need the right type of clouds containing the right type of ice crystals to create the effect. Like so many amazing things, we miss them because we don't happen to look in the right place at the right moment.

I moved across the street into the shadow of a utility pole to try to get a better view of the halo. It turns out my phone camera image isn't wide enough to capture the whole thing, at least in portrait mode. And the lower portion of the halo was either unformed or too low to be seen. I have seen fully circular halos in the past, but those have been in late Spring, with the Sun placed much higher in the sky.

Goes to show, you never know what you might see if you just look!