‘Halo’ appears over Abu Dhabi

Drinking in the view: a halo forms a circle around the the sun and shines on Abu Dhabi. Ravindranath K / The National

ABU DHABI // Residents in the capital were treated to an awe-inspiring sight in the sky on Sunday when a phenomenon known as a 22-degree halo was visible at noon and well into the afternoon.

The halo appeared as a rainbow-like ring with limited colours, forming a circle around the Sun, with the inside of the ring noticeably darker than the horizon.

Toqueer Ahmed noticed the halo while outside at noon. “I walked to a different location thinking it was a reflection, but it still appeared as it is,” said Mr Ahmed. “I live in Khalidiyah, I’ve been here eight years, I’ve seen lot of sunny days but nothing like this. It was very surprising, we were shocked when we saw it.”

The halo is formed around the Sun or the Moon when light is refracted through tiny hexagonal ice crystals trapped within cirrus clouds.

The clouds are faintly visible to the eye, located between five and 10 kilometres high in the Earth’s atmosphere.

The phenomenon was not visible in Dubai.

Halos around the Sun and the Moon were believed to be part of a primitive form of weather forecasting, and are sometimes observed before rainfall.

While no rain is expected in Abu Dhabi for the next three days, local forecasters are predicting partly cloudy weather into Monday.

“In the daytime it [the halo] doesn’t have any significance apart from indicating a thin layer of moisture in the atmosphere,” said Sufian Farrah, a senior meteorologist with the National Centre of Meteorology and Seismology.