Here's a snapshot of a rather prominent parhelion, or sundog, that I took with a Sony DSC-S600 digital camera while at Cherry Springs State Park last month.

Dave Mitsky

Attached Images

Sundog Small 569 2007-5-11.jpg (91.5 KB, 69 views)

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Hi Dave - I used to see something like this a lot when I lived on the East coast, and had more clouds than I'm seeing most of the time in Los Angeles. We used to call what we saw then Mock Suns. Is this the same thing? It looks like it. I seem to remember seeing a few of them; sometimes there would be one on the opposite side (left vs. right) of the Sun, equally spaced. Very interesting! Thanks for posting!

Clear skies! Of course, if you have them, you wouldn't see these

Paul

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Paul,

Sundogs and mock suns are one and the same. The technical name is parhelia. Similar atmospheric phenomena involving the Sun and hexagonal ice crystals include halos, sun pillars, and tangent and circumzenithal arcs.

From Eric Weisstein's World of Astronomy:

"Also called mock suns or parhelia, sundogs are bright, colorful light patches which appear in ice clouds 22° or more to either side of the Sun. At sunrise and sunset, the angular separation from the Sun is exactly 22°. When the Sun is high, the sundogs may appear diamond-shaped, and no sundogs can occur if the Sun is higher than 61°. In addition, a bluish streamer is sometimes seen extending from them in the direction Sun."

There's more on these atmospheric phenomena at these sites:

http://www.atoptics.co.uk/halosim.htm

http://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/common.htm

http://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/parhelia.htm

http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/gu...pt/ice/sd.rxml

I'm including a photo of a sun pillar that I took five years ago.

Dave Mitsky

Attached Images

Sun Pillar 2004-02-17.jpg (103.2 KB, 11 views)

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You can search my blog for sundogs and such. I saw an incredible display a few years back, and it's one of my earliest posts.

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My sundog mage was chosen as the Astronomy.com picture of the day last Thursday, June 14.

http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default...id=99&aid=5667

Dave Mitsky

__________________
Chance favors the prepared mind.
De gustibus non est disputandum.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Congrats Mitsky Welldone!

Way to go, Dave!

Clear skies!

Paul

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