High Halo

The sun wore a halo around it around 1:08 PM, Saturday, May 12, 2012 as seen from the Bowman Woods neighborhood in NE Cedar Rapids. The sun was a lofty 66 degrees above the horizon in this view looking south. Haloes are caused by refracted light passing through ice crystals in cirriform clouds that lie between the observer and the light source and are present high in the atmosphere. Most ice crystals are hexagonal with two flat ends.