Ice Halo

Among the various optical phenomena, the common rainbow is probably the most well known.

Less known, but occurring more frequently, are the various types of ice halos around the sun (or the moon), and now during late winter/early spring halos can be seen rather often (but take care not to look at the sun!).

The various shapes of ice crystals in the upper troposhere can produce many different types of ice halos including coloured or white arcs and spots and below is a picture of the most frequent ones, observed a couple of days ago.

Several different types can be seen in the picture and below is the same version of the picture with labels of the names of the different halos.