Strange Sky Phenomenon Recorded Across Eastern U.S. Before Hurricane Sandy - Oct. 2012

This phenomenon is called "Parhelia" -- for more on that go here.

These were all recorded a few days or less prior to Hurricane Sandy making landfall.

NASA solar physicist David Hathaway captured the above photo in Huntsville, Alabama two days ago after seeing the strange rings surrounding the afternoon sun.

NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office head Bill Cooke says that he had, "never seen anything quite like it." Another onlooker, Kyle Winkleman, called it a "once-in-a-decade event."

Well how cool is this?

I saw the picture and videos and was in amazement at how beautiful and hauntingly eerie it looks.

I know it is a sun dog, but to me this is a sun dog on steroids. With all the beautiful geometry involved with the amount of circles around...wow.

I looked around to see if anyone posted this, so my apologies if it has been posted before.

Enjoy the beauty of nature.

Any thoughts?

Pred...

Has to be aliens landing....LOL....Couldn't resist....

Very cool picture. Wish there were a bunch more. Nature is amazing!

Thanks for that.

Extremely cool photo. That, right there is awesome.

I saw something very similar to that here in England about one month back. The sun was in about the same position from the horizon. However here, it was just a single halo around the sun. Had never seen anything like it before.

can you imagine how that might have come across to our ancestors several thousand years ago?
I bet it was an event that was recorded in stone somewhereamazing.

Have been looking further into Petratherm, they have received millions in funding and are sponsored by DARPA. Also reviewing the Seismic Activity occurring around the world. The drill sites seem to be right on top where seismic activity is present. Here is a google map of drill sites.maps.google.com.au...://renewable.carboncapturereport.org/cgi-bin//dailyreport_kml%3FDATE%3D2010-06-28%26r%3D3 04522026.6701%26type%3D1&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=websearch. Now hear is a map of the 3500km long lightning ridge across Australia.www.facebook.com... Finally hear is a map of the Earthquakes around the world. Iam going to see if I can simulate a pattern.quakes.globalincidentmap.com...

A double rainbow?

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

www.youtube.com...

I just had to register to ask. Did anybody also notice the same small light concentration not quite opposite the sun along the circular path at 5:26 and 4:26? Since I am not familiar with sundog phenomena, is this a normal presentation?

The head of Nasa Environment Office Bill Cooke seems to think this is a rare presentation. Very interesting.





Since the videos are from two different locations, maybe it can be ruled an actual object? Just speculating.

reply to post by predator0187

Actualy it's called an ice halo.

Article of that photo at spaceweather : link

ice crystal halos

I'm glad to see people still notice nature's beauty, maybe there is still hope...
Although some of nature's events like hurricanes, bring destruction, take lives, destroy human properties and so,...we all know who is to blame for that right?
For me this is still number one on my list 'what are we living for'.

Finally the second sun is on it's way.....

Welcome Nibiru.

reply to post by predator0187


That is a pretty sweet picture...it could almost be used for my wallpaper on my desktop

Originally posted by Raulken
Since I am not familiar with sundog phenomena, is this a normal presentation?

Welcome to ATS Raulken.

How do you define "normal"?

Just to be clear, sundogs (or "parhelia") are one particular sub-type of ice halo. In the image/footage, what we are seeing (sundogs, parhelic circle, tangent arc, parry arc, etc ) are all collectively known as a "display of ice halos and arcs".

A display like the one we are seeing in the images/footage would be classed as "complex display", and whilst complex displays are not very common at all, they are "normal".

To elaborate a bit, ice halos/arcs are caused when sun light shines trough ice crystals that usually form high altitude clouds. For a specific halo to be formed, those crystals have to be a certain shape. It's not often, but sometimes the conditions are right for less frequently seen shapes to form, which in turn gives rise to less frequently seen halos/arcs.

In some cases particular halos/arcs are seen because the ice crystals are more uniformin shape or well orientated, so light that is normally not strong enough to be visible, is now visible, resulting in multiple sub-types of halo being produced by the same shape of crystal.

In a complex display, the conditions had to have been right for a few different less common crystal shapes to form (or for more uniformity/orientation), each giving rise to particular halos/arcs.

In this case it seems that Sandy might have something to do with those particular conditions being present, although more usually complex displays are not associated with extreme weather events from what I have seen.

Originally posted by Raulken
Did anybody also notice the same small light concentration not quite opposite the sun along the circular path at 5:26 and 4:26?

Yes - it's actually a 120° parhelion (or "sundog"), which is caused by the same plate shaped ice crystals that cause the more commonly seen 22° parhelion/sundog.

It's an easy one to identify since parhelia can always be found on the parhelic circle (the "circular path" which you referred to which is very bright and obvious in the display we are discussing here), and 120° parhelia are always found on the opposite side of the sky from the Sun.



They might be easy to identify in a case like this, but they are not always so easy to spot...

Always look carefully for 120° parhelia whenever the ordinary 22° sundogs are very bright. They are not particularly rare, but when they are diffuse they can sometimes be difficult to distinguish from bright areas of cloud.

The parhelia result from at least two internal reflections. Rays enter the plate crystal top face, internally reflect off two adjacent side faces then leave through the lower face. The horizontal deflection of the ray is always 120° regardless of the angle of incidence of the incoming ray ~ hence the parhelion rather than yet another parhelic circle ray.

These things can also be hard to see unless there is a uniform layer of cloud/ice crystals all over the sky, which is not usually the case. More usually there are small patches of the "right stuff", and as those patches drift across the sky, when they reach the right position in relation to the sun in the sky, they "catch" as I like to call it.

For example, here's the most recent 22° sundog that I photographed just over a month ago. It's actually a "contrail dog" - contrails are also made of ice crystals. This particular one was only visible for perhaps a minute or two as it drifted over the right part of the sky for a sundog to be visible. You can see the difference in light intensity in the parts of the contrail that are "catching" (on the right) compared to the part that is not "catching"(on the left). The Sun is just out of frame on the right, and roughly level with the dog.

Wide angle view:


Telephoto:



Here are some more sundogs that I photographed for comparison. Note the similarities in colours (more red closer to the Sun) that are characteristic of 22° sundogs.





Partially obscured sun dog.


We do get quite a lot of low altitude cloud that tends to obscure the high altitude clouds that produce halo/arc displays here in the UK, but even so we see frequent halos/arcs like this circumzenithal arc (CZA) very frequently:



We also see the occasional rarer halo, but so far most have eluded our DSLRs!

Originally posted by Raulken
Since the videos are from two different locations, maybe it can be ruled an actual object? Just speculating.

It's not unheard of for the same display to be seen from multiple locations as the ice crystals/clouds drift or are pushed (by Sandy in this case) over different areas. It was mentioned in the spaceweather.com article that the displays were all observed on the edge of Sandy, and the edge of Sandy tracked/extended over quite a few states, so it's not surprising that these relatively rare displays were seen in a few places.

it's very interesting phenomena whatever it is.. that still you have looks like an eyeball.. lol here's a site that has links to several interesting video's of both events too..

strangesoundsinthesky.com...