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Credit: Joe Orman
Explanation:
What if you woke up one morning and saw
more than one Sun in the sky?
Most probably, you would be seeing sundogs, extra-images of the
Sun created by falling
ice-crystals in the Earth's atmosphere.
As water freezes in the atmosphere,
small, flat, six-sided,
ice crystals might be formed.
As these crystals flutter to the ground,
much time is spent with their faces flat, parallel to the ground.
An observer may pass through the same plane as many of the
falling ice crystals near sunrise or sunset.
During this alignment, each crystal can act like a miniature lens,
refracting sunlight into our view and creating
parhelia,
the technical term for sundogs.
Sundogs were
photographed here in a cloudy sky above the
Very Large Array of
radio telescopes.
The real Sun is near the center above the train tracks. A bright
sundog is visible on the far right, and a dim one on the far left.
Ice-crystals can create other strange
illusions of the Sun and Moon including halos and pillars
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NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: atmosphere - VLA - sun dogs
Publications with words: atmosphere - VLA - sun dogs
See also: