Spectacular Sun Dogs Seen in Minneapolis

Dec. 15, 2008 -- Sun dogs or "sundogs" are described as rings around the sun. The atmospheric conditions must be just right for these phenomenon appear: air temperature must be below zero, there must have been a recent snowfall, the wind must be stronger than 10 mph, and it must be sunrise. Minnesota gets those conditions fairly often, but I've only seen a sun dog a handful of times. As I was driving to work in the morning on Dec. 15, I saw a sun dog!

Sun Dogs - What do they look like?

The sun dogs I have seen usually look like bright shafts of light that point upward. They appear on either side of the sun, and if you have an unobscured view, you will see a halo around the sun, with two "mock" suns on either side of the actual sun.

The ones I saw on Dec. 15 were rainbow colored.

The ice crystals in the air refract the light and sometimes produce a rainbow effect. The rainbow appeared to be inside a shaft of light, kind of like a regular rainbow, but the colors were more subtle, maybe because the sky was so bright. I had never seen a rainbow hued sun dog before.

As I was driving, the sun dogs seemed high up in the sky. At first I noticed the shafts of bright light on either side of the sun. They appeared to be going straight up to the sky. When I had the chance to look up again, I noticed that the bright lights on either side of the sun were connected by an arc of light that curved up and over the sun. I had never seen a "whole" two sun dogs connected like that.

Sun Dogs - Why are they called Sun Dogs?

The rings are supposed to resemble the tails of dogs.

Sun Dogs - Photos

When I finally stopped to take the picture, the wind chill was -33 degrees F and the air temperature was -3 degrees F. I knew I would be a few minutes late to work, as well as slightly frozen. The viewfinder was not wide enough to capture both sides of the sun dog, so I took a picture of the right sun dog and the sun. The sun is toward the left of the photo. The rainbow color was gone by the time I took the photograph.

If you want to see some fantastic photos, check out Atmospheric Optics.

Sun dogs - The Physics

A scientific explanation of sun dogs can be found at Georgia State University's HyperPhysics site.

Source: Wikipedia