Day 51 POTD: Sundogs-They mean only one thing: COLD!!!!!

The bright light to the far right of the tower IS the sun, but the rainbow -like light to the immediate right is a sundog.

These two photos are with different white balance settings to try and capture more of the colorful streaks in the sundogs.


Sundogs typically appear when the sun is low, at sunrise and sunset, (although these photos were taken at 9am or noon) and the atmosphere is filled with ice crystals, diamond dust, or ice fog. They are often bright white patches of light, almost looking like the sun, but often have rainbows of colors, and are shaped like halos around the sun. White sundogs are caused by light reflected off of atmospheric ice crystals, while colored sundogs are caused by light refracted through them. Both the angle of the sun rays and the orientation of the crystals affects the shape and color of the sundogs. Misaligned or wobbling crystals produce colorful and elongated sundogs. The parhely circle is a horizontal circle at the same height as the sun, barely visible in the photo above, more so in the photo below. There may be brighter points on it, at the intersections with the halos called parhely, at 120° called parenthely and at the opposite of the sun called anthely (rare). When those points are bright, they are often called "fake suns" or "sun dogs" and they are visible here.
And just in case you're wondering, yes, it IS cold here. Very cold. Un-frickin'-believably COLD. 40 to 50 degrees below windchill cold. Minus 32 degrees WITHOUT windchill! The kind where if you boil a pot of water and throw it up in the air, it freezes into crystallized vapor instantly. And no, I'm not going to do it and take a photo of it, I don't care HOW MUCH I love POTD!