Category: Photos

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Collage of 3 photos of the sky. 1: a bright spot in the middle of the sky. 2. A bright almost horizontal line above a building, curving slightly upward. 3. A bright vertical line, curving slightly to the left with a faint reverse rainbow pattern, the red on the inner edge and blue on the outer.

Sun halo fragments, clockwise from upper left:

  1. A sundog to the left of the sun.
  2. Part of a 22° circular halo to the right.
  3. Part of a parhelic circle (I think) in the opposite direction.

I spotted these just walking to lunch today, shortly after noon (well, DST noon). I wasn’t sure what I was seeing at first with the parhelic circle. It was clearly too smooth and regular to be part of the clouds surrounding it, but I’d never actually seen one before. Sundogs and 22-degree halos are a lot more common, even in the Los Angeles area.

After looking around for other halos, spotting the sundog and the 22°, and checking the height of both the sun and the mystery arc, I realized it was probably part of the parhelic circle, which when complete is a white circle running around the entire sky at the same altitude as the sun.

It wasn’t clear to the eye, but in the (slightly contrast-enhanced) photo of the sundog, it looks like the circle extends through it…which suggests to me that maybe I have seen it before. I’ve seen what I thought were elongated sundogs, but maybe they were sundogs with small fragments of this halo.

Halos like these are caused by reflections of sunlight inside ice crystals, sometimes near the ground and sometimes, as in this case, up in the sky. Different shapes, sizes and arrangements of crystals create different paths to the eye, which make different halos.

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A tree in a city park, knocked down during a heavy storm.

What struck me most about the view from this side was the patch of sod hanging off of the exposed roots.

You can see where the first tree knocked over another tree.

Yes, one tree fell on another and knocked it down too. Or maybe one fell and then the other fell on top of it – it’s hard to tell, since we weren’t there at the time.

Originally posted on a mix of Instagram and Flickr.

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Venus and Mercury

I walked out of the office building this evening and just stopped. There, framed by the treetops along the street and the awning and wall of the next building over, was clearly Venus, which I hadn’t seen in months (since the last time it was visible in the evening), and below it a pinprick that, unless I’m mistaken, was Mercury (which I’ve only ever seen on a handful of occasions). It’s certainly in the right place, and I waited to see if either light would move (there’s an airport literally across the street) before deciding that they were both planets.

A few minutes earlier, Mercury would have been too faint. A few minutes later, it would have been below the trees. Not long after that, Venus would have been too low to see as well.

Update! The next two nights were too cloudy to see anything, but Friday evening I was able to spot them again! You can really see how much Mercury has moved relative to Venus in just three days.

Venus and Mercury 2

Update 2! And here’s the view the following Tuesday, one week after the first shot. I had to move to the left a few feet since they were behind the building now, which is why the light pole is visible this time. In retrospect, I wish I’d snapped it in all three shots, because that way I’d be able to make sure I was presenting them all at the same zoom level. I’ve been eyeballing it, and I think it’s close enough to get the idea across.

Venus and Mercury 3

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Umbrella shadows and reflection

Late afternoon sun reflecting off a decorated window into the shadow of an umbrella.

We went out for frozen yogurt yesterday to celebrate finally putting all the Christmas decorations away, only to find that the shop still had their Halloween decorations up. I didn’t feel quite so bad after that!

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