Bengaluru’s residents witnessed a rare Sun halo phenomenon

Residents of Bengaluru witnessed a rare phenomenon today as a rainbow-colored ring circled the Sun creating a halo around the star. City’s Residents were left marvelled as the ‘halo’ appeared around the Sun on Monday morning. The halo seen across the capital of Karnataka, owing to clear skies, was seen for an hour as the striking colours covering the Sun. This rare phenomenon occurs due to the dispersion of light.

While it was first seen around 11 am and lasted for over an hour, residents of Bengaluru flooded social media with pics of the rare phenomenon.

What is Sun’s halo?

Sun halo is known as ’22 degree halo’. It is an optical phenomenon that occurs due to sunlight twisting in millions of hexagonal ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere. It takes the form of a ring with a radius of almost 22 degrees around the Sun or the Moon.

The clouds contain millions of micro ice crystals that refract, split, and even reflect the light to portray a spherical rainbow ring. The crystals have to be aligned and positioned just to your eye for the halo to appear.

The Sun’s halo or infrequently the Moon’s also called a moon ring, or winter halo happens when the Sun’s or Moon’s rays get refracted.

While the halo mostly appearing around the Moon, known as lunar halos, is colorless, as the moonlight is not bright. In the Sun’s case, these colours are more visible and appear as bright as a rainbow.

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