Cellini’s Halo

Cellini’s halo, also called Heiligenschein, bright white ring surrounding the shadow of the observer’s head on a dew-covered lawn with a low solar elevation angle. The low solar angle causes an elongated shadow, so that the shadow of the head is far from the observer, a condition that is apparently required for Cellini’s halo to be observed.

This phenomenon is generally attributed to reflection of incident sunlight by the dewdrops. Light reflected from the surface of such a drop will be most intense in the backward direction and falls off in intensity as the reflection angle deviates from 180°. The shadow of the observer’s head encompasses the precise 180° line, and therefore no light can be reflected from this direction. If this shadow is far enough away, however, light reflected from drops immediately surrounding the observer’s head-shadow back to the observer’s eye will be reflected through nearly 180°; the farther away the shadow, the more nearly does the angle approach 180°. Hence, the reflected light surrounding the observer’s head-shadow under these conditions will be relatively bright, giving rise to Cellini’s halo.