A "SUN DOG" KIND OF DAY!

Hi Everybody!!
Who let the Sun Dogs out? Haha! I captured one of these dogs for you to see. Shared below is also a Wikipedia page on Sun Dog. Sightings were once rare and considered miracles. In the present day and time, we know many chemicals have been injected into the atmosphere with climate change. Perhaps that is one reason sightings of Sun Dogs are now common. I see many and have photographed them and posted in my albums. They are beautiful to me and a delight to see in the sky. I hope you all will catch a sighting of a Sun Dog. Enjoy!






https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/117645114459863049265/albums/6064183419246905633




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_dog

Sun dog

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sun dogs (or sundogs), mock suns^[1] or phantom suns,^[2] scientific name parhelia (singular parhelion), are an atmospheric phenomenon that consists of a pair of bright spots on either side on the sun, often co-occurring with a luminous ring known as a 22° halo.^[3]

Sun dogs are a member of a large family of halos, created by light interacting with ice crystals in the atmosphere. Sun dogs typically appear as two subtly-colored patches of light to the left and right of the sun, approximately 22° distant and at the same elevation above the horizon as the sun. They can be seen anywhere in the world during any season, but they are not always obvious or bright. Sun dogs are best seen and are most conspicuous when the sun is low.

Formation and characteristics[edit]

Sundogs are commonly made by the refraction of light from plate-shaped hexagonal ice crystals in high and cold cirrus clouds or, during very cold weather, these ice crystals drift in the air at low levels, in which case they are called diamond dust. The crystals act as prisms, bending the light rays passing through them with a minimum deflection of 22°. If the crystals are randomly oriented, a complete ring around the sun is seen — a halo. But often, as the crystals sink through the air, they become vertically aligned, so sunlight is refracted horizontally — in this case, sundogs are seen.

As the sun rises higher, the rays passing through the crystals are increasingly skewed from the horizontal plane. Their angle of deviation increases, and the sundogs move farther from the sun.^[4] However, they always stay at the same elevation as the sun.

Sundogs are red-colored at the side nearest the sun. Farther out the colors grade through oranges to blue. However, the colors overlap considerably and so are muted, never pure or saturated. The colors of the sundog finally merge into the white of the parhelic circle (if the latter is visible).

It is possible to predict the forms of sundogs as would be seen on other planets and moons. Mars might have sundogs formed by both water-ice and CO₂-ice. On the giant gas planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — other crystals form the clouds of ammonia, methane, and other substances that can produce halos with four or more sundogs.^[5]

Very bright sundogs in Fargo, North Dakota. Note the halo arcs passing through each sundog.

Jakob Hutter[edit]

Possibly the earliest clear description of a sundog is by Jacob Hutter, who wrote in his Brotherly Faithfulness: Epistles from a Time of Persecution:

My beloved children, I want to tell you that on the day after the departure of our brothers Kuntz and Michel, on a Friday, we saw three suns in the sky for a good long time, about an hour, as well as two rainbows. These had their backs turned toward each other, almost touching in the middle, and their ends pointed away from each other. And this I, Jakob, saw with my own eyes, and many brothers and sisters saw it with me. After a while the two suns and rainbows disappeared, and only the one sun remained. Even though the other two suns were not as bright as the one, they were clearly visible. I feel this was no small miracle…^[14]

(please see link for complete article)














...this is brendasue signing off from Rainbow Creek.  See you next time!



Note to my friends following this Blog in real time: 
I am sorry about the interruption once again. After 6 months of computer connection problems, I have finally discovered it was a modem going out. They shipped me a new one and once again I am plugged in to the internet. I am ready to go with the complete hummingbird daily migration photos for 2 months now! There are still about 50 birds here. This has been the best migration I have ever witnessed and I feel I have captured the essence of these precious birds to share with you! b

O+O