The prodigious halo of the other Huygens

Abstract

At the height of the ceremony in the Principality of Orange of the restoration of the sovereignty of the House of Nassau in 1665, a ceremony led by Christiaan's father, Constantijn Huygens, a "solar crown" appeared in the sky, apparently a divine sign of approval. A nearly forgotten contemporary color engraving of this miraculous event has survived. Constantijn seized the opportunity by using to his advantage the general euphoria among the citizens caused by the appearance. We argue that Constantijn knew exactly what was going on in the sky because of his son's work on halo theory. Given its brightness and its time of appearance, it seems plausible that the most prominent halo in the Orange halo display was a circumscribed halo rather than the more familiar but bleaker circular 22° halo. The same probably holds for most of the other high-sun halos that caused general consternation, dating from the Octavian halo of 44 BC, to the Chernobyl halo of 1986, and indeed up to bright high-sun halos of the present.

A note on the radiance distributions of halos due to scattering by randomly orientated crystals

“…8 demonstrate the fundamental different nature of the radiance distribution of a circular halo according to the realistic approach and the naive approach (see, for a similar comparison, Figs. 5 and 6 of [23] the values of D are higher than those for the circular halo ( Fig. 5).…”

“…The result [Eqs. (23)] for the radiance distribution of circular refraction halos-a jump discontinuity at θ halo instead of an infinite spike-was loosely obtained in 1983 [17] and 11 years later reproduced by Berry [21]. Figure 5 shows D ran , as calculated for the 22°ice crystal halo and a point Sun.…”

Ice halos in history and superstition plus fire halos

“…Concerned members of the public connected the halo to the radiation. Gunther P. Können writes: …the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute was flooded by hundreds of telephone calls by people who were afraid that the circle around the sun meant that radioactive particles were present in the air (Können, ).…”

“…He then mentioned ancestors who observed solar halos previously, including Mark Antony in 44 bc . Apparently Mark Antony and Octavian observed the same halo (Können, ), but only one of them (Octavian) appeared to be surrounded by it, which his allies considered to be a good omen. This proved to be true, as Octavian became sole ruler (Augustus) of the Roman Empire, while Mark Antony committed suicide.…”

“…Können also mentions a so‐called ‘tsunami halo’ (Können, ), as reported by Claudia Hinz: in Bavaria, after Christmas Eve 2004 prayers, churchgoers noticed a bright 22° halo around the moon, which was positioned just above the church. Because people had never seen such a thing before, they photographed it and sent the pictures to the local newspaper.…”