Lowitz arc

[1][2] The phenomenon is named after Johann Tobias Lowitz (or Lovits) (1757 - 1804), a German-born Russian apothecary and experimental chemist.

[3] On the morning of June 18, 1790 in St. Petersburg, Russia, Lowitz witnessed a spectacular display of solar halos.

En second lieu ils étoient pourvues des queues longues, claires & blanches x ζ & y η , opposées au soleil & renfermées dans la circonference du grand cercle afbg.

These last two parhelia which were at some distance from the intersections of the great horizontal circle by the two coronas which surrounded the sun, sent, in the first place, from the two sides very short colored arcs xi & yk whose direction inclined below the sun as far as the two interior semicircular arcs die & dke.

Like the 22° solar halo and sun dogs, Lowitz arcs are believed to be caused by sunlight refracting (bending) through ice crystals.

In 1840, the German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle (1812 - 1910) proposed that lower Lowitz arcs were produced as sun dogs are; that is, by sunlight refracting through hexagonal ice crystals.

[15] The other Lowitz arcs—the middle and upper arcs—are caused by sunlight passing through the two other pairs of faces of the hexagonal ice plate.

Lowly visible lines going up and down from the side sun are most likely Lowitz's arcs
Lowitz's diagram of solar halos (1790). The Sun (labeled αβa) lies within the two overlapping circles near the bottom of the image. Sun dogs (labeled bx and cy) lie to the Sun's left and right. The "Lowitz arcs" (labeled xi and yk) descend at an acute angle from the sun dogs and intersect the circles that surround the Sun.