Sundogs are also known as mock suns or parhelia, which means “with the sun”. Sun Pillars: Sun Pillars appear as a shaft of light extending vertically above the sun, most often at sunrise or sundown. They develop as a result of ice crystals slowly falling through the air, reflecting the sun’s rays off of them.

Bottom line: Halos around the sun or moon are caused by high, thin cirrus clouds drifting high above your head. Tiny ice crystals in Earth’s atmosphere create the halos. They do it by refracting and reflecting the light. Lunar halos are signs that storms are nearby.

Mohan, Lok Sabha member from Bengaluru Central constituency, shared three photos of the ‘stunning sun halo’ on Twitter. Another person joked on Twitter that even the sun is social distancing. Although the phenomenon is rare, it is not unheard of.

They are called ’22-degree halos’ because for an observer, the ring has a radius of approximately 22 degree around the sun or moon. They are called ’22-degree halos’ because for an observer, the ring has a radius of approximately 22 degree around the sun or moon.

Probably the biggest difference between the two is that a rainbow usually signals an end to the rain, while a sundog often means that rain, or snow is on the way. Next time you see a sundog, look out for wet weather!

A Sun halo is caused by the refraction, reflection, and dispersion of light through ice particles suspended within thin, wispy, high altitude cirrus or cirrostratus clouds. As light passes through these hexagon-shaped ice crystals, it is bent at a 22° angle, creating a circular halo around the Sun.

The rare optical and atmospheric phenomenon takes place due to the dispersion of light is called ’22 degree circular halo’ as a ring with an apparent radius of approximately 22° around the Sun or Moon. The rare optical and atmospheric phenomenon takes place due to the dispersion of light.

Sun halo, also known as ’22 degree halo’, is an optical phenomenon that occurs due to sunlight refracting in millions of hexagonal ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere. It is known by this name as the light takes the form of a ring with a radius of approximately 22 degrees around the sun or the moon.

You need the right atmospheric conditions for ice crystals to form, then the sun has to be at the correct angle for light to refract. Rare or not — according to folklore, sun dogs are a sign of good luck.

Since high clouds up in the atmosphere move faster, the high clouds out ahead of a storm system can often be seen first before the lower clouds and precipitation arrive. Therefore, sun dogs (or “snow bows” if using them to predict snow) often foretell precipitation in the next 12-24 hours.

Ice crystals form when the atmosphere is cold enough, so instead of having little water droplets in the sky, which help form clouds, you actually have ice crystals, Rogers says. He says when sunlight hits the crystals, it gets bent in a way that refracts the light into what we see as a sundog.

By day, with the Sun, one of these phenomena is called a parhelion, or sun dog. By night, it is called a paraselene, or Moon dog. Look for a Moon dog when you see high, thin, cirrus clouds near the Moon.

A moon dog, moondog, or mock moon, (scientific name paraselene, plural paraselenae, meaning “beside the moon”) is a relatively rare bright circular spot on a lunar halo caused by the refraction of moonlight by hexagonal-plate-shaped ice crystals in cirrus or cirrostratus clouds.

Sundogs are formed from hexagonal ice crystals in high and cold cirrus clouds or, during very cold weather, by ice crystals drifting in the air at low levels. These crystals act as prisms, bending the light rays passing through them.

fire rainbows

In the Bible’s Genesis flood narrative, after creating a flood to wash away humanity’s corruption, God put the rainbow in the sky as the sign of his promise that he would never again destroy the earth with flood (Genesis 9:13–17):

Bottom line: You might on occasion see a rainbow-like cloud. They’re fairly rare, but people do spot them, and we sometimes receive photos of them. They’re caused by the presence of very tiny ice crystals or water droplets in the air, which cause light to be diffracted (spread out).

Why pink? Thunder clouds are very dense and dense clouds have no intrinsic colour. Light rays are multiply scattered by their water droplets and so the wavelength dependence of angular scattering that, in very thin clouds, gives rise to iridescence or the colours of coronae is averaged out.

Red, orange and pink clouds occur almost entirely at sunrise and sunset and are the result of the scattering of sunlight by the atmosphere. The clouds do not become that color; they are reflecting long and unscattered rays of sunlight, which are predominant at those hours.

The longer sunlight travels through the sky, the more colors the sunlight loses. During sunrise, sunlight has a longer distance to travel through the sky before it reaches you. The colors that make it to your eyeballs are pinks and oranges and reds, because they are less likely to be scattered by the atmosphere.