A lucky photographer managed to get a once-in-a-lifetime photograph of a solar halo perfectly hovering over Devils Tower in case of being in just the right place at just the right time.
The Beyond Earth Institute shared the photo of the 22-degree solar halo that appeared Wednesday when the sun was directly over Devils Tower.
"One of nature's most beautiful optical displays" lasted for only a few minutes before the clouds changed, and the halo faded away,” said the nonprofit group, which says it’s mission is "enabling human migration into the solar system."
When Cowboy State Daily meteorologist Don Day saw the photo, he was immediately concerned it might be an AI-generated image. After review, this one checks out and has a scientific — not science fiction — explanation.
It’s not a callback to the time an alien ship famously hovered over Devils Tower in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind."
“It’s the clouds,” Day said. “Those are the perfect clouds at the right altitude and the right sun angle. It's a spectacular picture.”
The Perfect Angle
The phenomenon in the photo is a 22-degree solar halo. Day said that 22-degree angle is the crucial component.
“Those are cirrostratus clouds,” he said. “They’re thin, high-altitude clouds with hexagonal-shaped ice crystals inside because they’re so high, and that hexagonal shape causes 22-degree angles. That’s how you end up getting a circle.”
Cirrostratus clouds tend to form between 20,000 and 43,000 feet in the atmosphere. They’re well known for producing halos and other optical phenomena when sunlight shines through them.
What’s remarkable about the Beyond Earth Institute image is that the sun was at the perfect angle for the photographer to see the full circle, Day said. That’s the trickiest part of capturing a full solar halo.
“The best analogy I have is a rainbow,” Day said. “If you’re in the right spit with the right sun angle, you’ll see the whole rainbow from end to end. Solar halos happen more often than you’d think, but the cloud conditions and sun angle might only give you a partial halo.”
The sun is always at the center of a solar halo. The fact that this solar halo appeared when the sun was perched over the summit of Devils Tower was a brilliant stroke of luck for the photographer.
Cloudy With A Chance
Most atmospheric halos are the result of light shining through ice-laden clouds. Even rainbows and ghost rainbows are halos, though they appear as arcs because the light is diffracted from water droplets above the ground.
“We get halos through water droplets like in the fog, ice crystals from clouds, or ice crystals in really cold air,” Day said. “For 22-degree solar halos, you need the right sun angle and these high cirrostratus clouds, and you don’t get them all the time.”
Even in the heat of summer, Day said it can easily be cold enough for clouds loaded with ice crystals to form over Wyoming.
“You'd be surprised how quickly it gets cold at this time of year,” he said. “It’s usually around freezing at 15,000 feet and well below freezing at 20,000 feet and above.”
Day expected that many of Wyoming’s outdoor and wildlife photographers have seen partial or full solar halos during their long sojourns in the wilderness. Nevertheless, this solar halo above Devils Tower is something special.
“They probably see these things more often than your average Joe, just because they put themselves in those situations,” he said. “But I'm sure all those photographers will tell you that their best photos were the ones they didn't plan, and this is definitely one of those. It’s a gorgeous photo.”
Angels, Devils, Or Extraterrestrials
Hundreds of thousands of people reacted to Beyond Earth’s solar halo photo with varying perspectives.
Many saw it as an angelic symbol crowning Devils Tower with divinity, while others wondered if this was a harbinger of what Steven Spielberg depicted at Devils Tower in 1977’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”
Day’s expertise on sky-related systems doesn’t extend to celestial, extraterrestrial, or heavenly forces, but he didn’t require any of them to understand the solar halo.
“When you get these cirrostratus clouds moving in, there’s the opportunity that this will happen,” he said. “This appears to be an earth-based phenomenon.”
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
