Heli­copter blades mov­ing through a dust cloud cre­ate a strik­ing halo:

Basi­cally it is a result of sta­tic elec­tric­ity cre­ated by fric­tion as mate­ri­als of dis­sim­i­lar mate­r­ial strike against each other. In this case titanium/nickel blades mov­ing through the air and dust. It occurs on the ground as well, but you don’t usu­ally see it as much unless the air­craft is land­ing or tak­ing off. The most com­mon time is when fuel is being pumped. When large tankers are being fueled they must be grounded to pre­vent sta­tic elec­tric­ity from dis­charg­ing and cre­at­ing explo­sions.