Sun Dogs in a Summer Sky
Last night, Claudia and I were celebrating our 10 year anniversary of when we started dating on the Marktplein in Hilversum. With the sun angling down in the sky behind some wispy clouds, we were having an ice-cream for dessert, when I spotted a prominent sun dog to the right of the sun. Afterwards, I noticed the slightly dimmer sun dog to the left of the sun, and took a picture using my mobile camera.
I processed the image a bit in Gimp to bring out the details of the sun dogs more.
So, what exactly is a sun dog then?
A sun dog, officially known as a parhelion, is a bright spot on either side of the Sun horizontally, typically appearing 22° to the left and right of the Sun, and usually in pairs. They may appear attached to the 22° halo which commonly forms around the Sun, or, as is the case in the photo I took, the halo can be missing either in part or completely. In my image, a faint trace of the halo can be seen attached to the two sun dogs, but the full halo was not visible.
The sun dogs are an atmospheric phenomenon caused by refraction of sunlight by ice crystals in the atmosphere, and are a fairly common occurence anywhere in the world, although, to be honest, I have rarely seen them myself, as they are often not easy to spot.
Wikipedia has more detailed information on how they are formed.