Home > Terms > English (EN) > halo of 22°

halo of 22°

A halo in the form of a circle, or portion of a circle, with an angular radius of about 22° about a light source, such as the sun or moon. This is the most common of all halos. The sky is darker just to the inside of the halo than it is to the outside. The halo exhibits a pale coloration from a reddish tint on the inside fading to a bluish white on the outside. The 22° halo is explained by the refraction of light that enters one prism face and leaves by the second prism face beyond, thus being refracted by a prism with an effective angle of 60°. The angle of minimum deviation for an ice prism of this prism angle is about 22°, so such light does not appear inside the halo, accounting for the darker region there. The minimum angle of deviation varies slightly with wavelength, with the longer wavelengths being deviated least. This causes the reddish inner edge, outside which the additional contributions from light of increasingly shorter wavelengths decrease the color purity. The orientation that a crystal must have to contribute light to the halo depends on both the elevation angle of the light source and the portion of the halo in question, but the probability that a crystal will have a particular orientation depends upon its type and size. Consequently, it is frequently the case that for a given population of crystals and sun height, only a portion of the halo will be seen, while a change in one or the other might enable the full circle to form. It is not the case, despite being frequently asserted, that a view of the full circle requires crystals to have random orientations.

0
  • Part of Speech: noun
  • Synonym(s):
  • Blossary:
  • Industry/Domain: Weather
  • Category: Meteorology
  • Company: AMS
  • Product:
  • Acronym-Abbreviation:
Collect to Blossary

Member comments

You have to log in to post to discussions.

Terms in the News

Billy Morgan

Sports; Snowboarding

The British snowboarder Billy Morgan has landed the sport’s first ever 1800 quadruple cork. The rider, who represented Great Britain in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, was in Livigno, Italy, when he achieved the man-oeuvre. It involves flipping four times, while body also spins with five complete rotations on a sideways or downward-facing axis. The trick ...

Marzieh Afkham

Broadcasting & receiving; News

Marzieh Afkham, who is the country’s first foreign ministry spokeswoman, will head a mission in east Asia, the state news agency reported. It is not clear to which country she will be posted as her appointment has yet to be announced officially. Afkham will only be the second female ambassador Iran has had. Under the last shah’s rule, Mehrangiz Dolatshahi, a ...

Weekly Packet

Language; Online services; Slang; Internet

Weekly Packet or "Paquete Semanal" as it is known in Cuba is a term used by Cubans to describe the information that is gathered from the internet outside of Cuba and saved onto hard drives to be transported into Cuba itself. Weekly Packets are then sold to Cuban's without internet access, allowing them to obtain information just days - and sometimes hours - after it ...

Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)

Banking; Investment banking

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is an international financial institution established to address the need in Asia for infrastructure development. According to the Asian Development Bank, Asia needs $800 billion each year for roads, ports, power plants or other infrastructure projects before 2020. Originally proposed by China in 2013, a signing ...

Spartan

Online services; Internet

Spartan is the codename given to the new Microsoft Windows 10 browser that will replace Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer. The new browser will be built from the ground up and disregard any code from the IE platform. It has a new rendering engine that is built to be compatible with how the web is written today. The name Spartan is named after the ...

Featured Terms

stanley soerianto
  • 0

    Terms

  • 107

    Blossaries

  • 6

    Followers

Industry/Domain: Food (other) Category: Functional food

Xian Bing

A cheap and cheering street snack that consists of wheat dough wrapped around any of a variety of fillings, such as minced pork mixed with chopped ...