Elsa the snow queen can freeze anything she touches, shoot ice crystals from her wrists and even build entire ice palaces.
Now the star of Disney’s film Frozen looks like she’s been working her magic over a picturesque spot in southern Germany.
A stunning snap shared by NASA shows a church near Füssen in Bavaria surrounded by ‘ice halos’ – rare phenomena caused by frozen water crystals in the air.
These stunning optical spectacles can range in shape from rings to arcs and even spots in the sky.
This image is rare, according to NASA, because it captured multiple halos in one go, including one shaped like a hot air balloon.
The perfect winter scene was taken earlier this month by German photographer Bastian Werner, who was taking photos near the church.
Posting it to his Instagram account, Mr Werner called it ‘a perfect motif’ and ‘very rare’.
‘Sprinting like a maniac through the deep snow when I noticed the ice fog at the end of our St Coleman shooting session,’ he said.
‘Good 60-70cm of snow was next to the chapel.
‘I rarely rate 10/10 for my own photo, but it really doesn’t get any better.
‘I have experienced so much this year, but I didn’t expect anything like this!’
On Wednesday, NASA chose the photo for its Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) website, which uploads a fresh image for the public daily.
The space agency called it ‘one of the greatest spectacles’ and described the science behind the formation of the ‘unusual sky arcs’.
Under cold enough temperatures – below 32°F or 0°C – water suspended in the air will freeze into ice, creating a faint fog.
These ice particles are not necessarily heavy enough to fall to the ground so they stay suspended in the air and can catch the sunlight.
The sunlight reflects and refracts –changes direction when it hits the crystals at an angle.
This results in an ice halo – an optical phenomenon that can range in shape from rings to arcs and even spots in the sky.
In the image, two prominent ice halos are visible – the 22-degree halo and the 46-degree halo, which is higher up.
Multiple arcs are also visible, including a horizontal arc that’s parallel to the ground and a subsun arc, the top arc to the sun.
Finally, the balloon-shaped curve connecting the top arc to the sun, called the heliac arc, is the rarest of all, according to NASA.
It was created by reflection from the sides of hexagonally shaped ice crystals suspended in a horizontal orientation.
According to Caltech, ‘exquisite halos’ can be observed from the south pole, resulting in especially spectacular images.
In Antarctica, because the temperatures are so cold and the air is so dry, snow crystals grow very slowly.
This slow growth tends to produce very clean hexagonal prisms, which are well suited for producing beautiful atmospheric displays.
Dr. Thomas Hughes is a UK-based scientist and science communicator who makes complex topics accessible to readers. His articles explore breakthroughs in various scientific disciplines, from space exploration to cutting-edge research.
