Sundogs in tundra along a trans-Alaska pipeline, during mid-winter
Yongwon Kim
University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, United States
This phenomenon is occurred by the reflection by crystal ice of the sunlight in air under cold, clear weather.
Featured on GeoLog, the official blog of the European Geosciences Union (opens in a new window)
Categories
Reuse
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) (opens in a new window)Credit: Yongwon Kim (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)
Properties
Type
Image
Format
JPG
Size
5.2 MB
Width
5616 px
Height
3744 px
Aspect
3:2
Brand
Canon
Model
Mark-II
Exposure
15 mm f/11 1/500 s ISO 100
Coordinates
70.1836, -148.4322
Tint
Grayish purplish blue
Submitted
3 May 2010
Comments
Apart from the sundogs, a 22 deg halo is also very clear in this mage. Both sundogs (also called parhelia) and the 22 deg halo are caused by minimum deviation of sunlight through the 60 deg prism of ice crystals (in cirrus clouds usually), the former when the crystal plates are oriented horizontally, the latter when they are oriented randomly. So in this picture I would assume you have both randomly oriented and horizontally oriented plates. Nice photo!