A halo around the sun gets Meridanos looking skyward

A halo around the sun caused a stir on social media today. Photo: Facebook / Terrence Price

Yet another phenomenon has arrived, and again, it’s not an omen that signals the end of the world.

The ring around the sun, which was noticed by hundreds of Meridanos shortly before noon, went viral on social media.

It is a solar halo, a circle around the sun, which is rare but not unheard of.

Others think it’s a sign of heavy rains coming to the region. That’s also unproven.

The halo is just an optical effect produced by the refraction of ice crystals suspended in the troposphere, the lowest layer of Earth’s atmosphere, where nearly all weather conditions take place. 

This generates a kind of hoop or ring around the sun and with red, green and violet tones.

The colors makes some think that it could be a rainbow circling the sun, but it is not.

A rainbow is produced by drops of water in suspension, that is, rain or drizzle, not ice crystals.

“Although this is thought to announce rains, it is not necessarily so. Nor does it predict ‘the end of the world.’ It is just a natural phenomenon, which we must appreciate without fear,” a Sipse reporter advises.

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