Chilean Dust Cloud

[fringe_dweller]

hi not sure where to put this, today as you know a dense section of the volcanic dust cloud was making its second record pass round globe, and dense leading funnel end was directly over Adelaide most of day - missed the best opportunity to get a pic this morning, it was surreal looking sky between clouds, a golden sunset type look/haze in vicinity of sun for some distance - at first i thought maybe it could be smoke from stubble burnoffs the farmers do this time of year, but after last nights soaking rain, there was no way it was smoke from fires, the rest of the sky was unbelievably clear from front passing thru last night - (i have included pic away from sun to show otherwise clear blue sky) the sun was illuminating the cloud as it moved thru sky - no processing done to any of pics.. amazing! never seen that before!
FOV - 350d @28 mm

[ngcles]

Hi Kearn & All,

Yes I noticed a similar effect surrounding the Sun today in Sydney after about 1.30pm -- an extended, bright weakly yellowish halo of scattered light around the Sun and about 25 degrees diameter. I too concluded it was probably forward-scattered light from the stratospheric volcanic aerosol and ash cloud from the Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcano in Chile.

It is not uncommon to see such an effect on exceptionally windy days (from dust) but the size of the halo (much bigger) and the colour was different to normal and while it was very breezy during the morning, the wind was not exceptionally strong.


Best,

Les D

[fringe_dweller]

Hi Les! well you guys should have a better halo tomorrow as the denser part heads your way .. its funny i looked for the halo first pass around of ash cloud last week, and didnt see anything conclusive, not like it was this morning! it seems its since it has got lower in atmosphere?
I remember reading about visual 'blue moons' created by volcanic ash, i think back in mt st helens era in '80's, wonder if anyone will see that this time, different type of particles?
I noticed in the recent chilean volcano footage of eruption, the ash plume looked gold/yellow, same as what i saw today

and this morning, and this afternoon i would say halo was bigger than 25d dia, more like 50 plus in early morning show, which was much more impressive, i'm sorry i didnt get shots of that! lol

[fringe_dweller]

it does seem that dense plume is passing over during the night for east coast as we speak according to sat image

http://www.bom.gov.au/info/vaac/cord...le_image.shtml