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Richard Walker

Sun dog

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Edited by Richard Walker, Wednesday, 17 Mar 2010, 18:55

Here is a 'sun dog' I saw yesterday evening.  The sun itself is just off to the left of the picture.  The sun dog is the bright feature in the middle.

These sun dogs appear when sunlight is refracted through hexagonal ice crystals which act as prisms.  They are quite common - much more frequent than rainbows for example - but usually people aren't looking out for them so they get missed.

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Great picture

I was completely unaware of sun dogs until a couple of years ago when I read about them in a book of clouds. The last sighting was last summer when I was travelling home on the train. I became rather animated, to the consternation of fellow passengers, and fumbled around for my camera phone but was thwarted as the view became obscured by a steep bank.

Beautiful things. Thanks for the pic.

Elizabeth Slade

sun dog

Thank you for showing me something I had no idea about.
my tent

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when I was a las, I used to see them all d' time on my paper-round. Had no idea they had a name - thank you

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Hi Richard,

Hope you don't mind a bump of an old post, but I saw a sundog yesterday. Here it is.

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Perhaps even more interesting was this "rainbow" almost directly above my head!

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The sun was quite low in the sky with the arc inverted as we faced the sun. It was quite a sight!

Can't recall ever seeing anything anything like it before. Beautiful.

(Pictures are shrunk down from 7 MP)

David