Circumhorizontal Arc

On a fine early morning, when the flight from Bangalore International Airport to London – Heathrow, climbed up the heights, I could see this Circumhorizontal Arc. (Look at the upper right-hand side of the first picture and slightly towards left from the center of the second picture to spot it.) But I am not sure if it is a Circumhorizontal Arc, or a sundog. The Wikipedia definition says that “a sundog is an atmospheric phenomenon that creates bright spots of light in the sky, often on a luminous ring or halo on either side of the sun”. You can read more about sundog in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_dog.Circumhorizontal arcs or fire bow are formed not from water droplets in sky, but due to the presence of ice crystals in sky in the form of Cirrus clouds. More info about Circumhorizontal arcs is available at wikipedia => Circumhorizontal Arc

Here is another similar optical event that I captured long back ago that looks like a Circumhorizontal Arc =>A Rainbow or a Circumhorizontal arc!!! and here is yet another capture that I made a while back that looked like a Sundog =>Parhelion

Climbing Above the Clouds

As the flight climbed up to the height from Bangalore International Airport on the way to London Heathrow on a fine morning, the cloud pattern changed their appearance over different layers. Here in the two pictures below, you can see the same layer of cloud from bottom and top. In the first picture you can see two layers of clouds, one below the level of the aircraft and one above, obscuring the sun. The second picture is taken after the flight climbed to some more height and reached farther high from the obscuring layer. But another dispersed layer of cloud is still visible obscuring the sun to a certain extend in the second picture also.

St. Catherine Church Payyampally – A Painting

The St. Catherine Church in Payyampally is a catholic Syro Malabar Church under Mananthavady Diocese. Payyampally Parish was promoted to Forane somewhere around the year 2000 with the following 11 parish under it, including Payyampally parish

St. George, Appapara

St. Thomas, Arattuthara

St. Joseph, Bavali

Bl. Chavara Kuriakose, Edayoorkunnu

Little Flower, Kammana

St. Sebastian, Kartikulam

St. Martin, Martin Nagar(Ondayangadi)

St. Alphonsa, Padmala

St. Mary, Panavally

St. Catherine, Payyampally

St. George, Thrissilery

The church was established in the year of 1936 as per the diocese website http://www.diocesemdy.org/.

The above painting shows the Church building which was constructed somewhere in 1970~75. I was not even born then. I asked my mother (P. C Mary, retired teacher of St. Catherine’s Higher Secondary school) and came to know that prior to the construction of the church that you see in this painting, the church was functioning in another small building adjacent to the old parish house which is now in the verge of collapse. Even before that the church was functioning in the old lower primary school building of St. Catherine’s Higher Secondary School. The LP school building is destructed as it reached its age limit and a basketball court stands in the location as of now in 2012. A new two storey concrete building is constructed as the new lower primary wing of St. Catherine’s school.

The building that you see in the above painting is destructed recently (2011~2012) and a new church building construction is going on which is expected to be complete by 2012~2013. So I thought of recreating the memories of the old church building by painting it and as a tribute to all those who nurtured out from this Parish during the last 35 or 40 years.

Read more about St. Catherine’s Higher secondary school here ->St. Catherine's Higher Secondary School