Talk:Halo (optical phenomenon)

Deletion of section on 'airplane glory'

In the version I'm looking at, there is a section on the "airplane glory", with the following explanation: "The second component is a halo which is created by the body of the airplane refracting the different wavelengths of light from the Sun before they strike the water droplets in the cloud below and are reflected back to the observer creating the illusion of a rainbow halo around the shadow." Unfortunately, this is nonsense. The glory is the result of preferential backscattering of light by small cloud droplets in the direction close to (but not at) 180 degrees from the light source. It would be present even without the body of aircraft. It depends on wave properties of light and can't be explained by refraction and internal reflection alone (unlike the rainbow). In any case, because 'airplane glory' is not a distinct phenomenon from 'glory', for which a reasonably correct and self-contained page already exists, I have deleted the section on 'airplane glory' and referred readers to the main 'glory' page ---- Gpetty 19:35, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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I've replaced the original image with one from the same NOAA collection that has a much clearer halo. I hope I'm not stepping on any toes by doing this. Also, the original image wasn't properly thumbnailed (probably due to the linking to the NOAA photo library). I've thumbed this one and put the links in the full image, with a "(NOAA)" in the caption. The images are public domain works of the US Government but according to the photo library site, credit is required/requested. Finally, I can't find if there is a prohibition against showing people on Wikipedia (the identity of the individual used to block the sun's glare isn't listed with the image) -- if so, please go ahead and delete. --Neurophyre 21:49, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Halo types

A while back sun dog and sun pillar were merged into this page and made redirects (or in the case of sun dog, a disambiguation page with text that didn't make it obvious that there was more information at this page). Recently a user came along and started adding new information about sun dogs to the disambiguation page.

Because there are so many types of halos, eventually if people start adding more information about them and pictures, this page is going to get rather unwieldy and it would be better for each distinct type of halo to have its own page and this page be a general description of a halo with wikilinks to the various types, sort of like what is done on optical phenomenon. I'm not going to revert the merging now because it's not bad as it stands, but I wanted to post this note here for future reference. Neurophyre 22:03, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This page should perhaps describe the generalities of ice halo formation. I.e. Sunlight refracted and reflected through atmospheric ice crystals of hexagonal prism or pyramidal shape, the importance of crystal alignment, clouds and ice fog harbouring such crystals, frequency of occurrence and halo types.

Individual halos can then have separate entries where their properties may be described in more detail and with a link to the general entry. 24 Nov 2006

Isn't Selene a Greek name rather than Latin?

Is Halo Really Greek?
just wondering because Im taking a greek class and I never heard it or saw it ina dictionary. maybe you should recheck that. --Harlequin12 14:40, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Objectless Halo

Is it possible for there to be a Halo without any kind of object in the center?

For some reason, when I was around ten or 12 (I forget.), there was a giant halo in the night sky, but there was no Moon with it. (There might of been stars, I don't remember.)

So I'm just wondering. - Jigsy 18:29, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]