Sundogs in tundra along a trans-Alaska pipeline, during mid-winter
by 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.
Submitted on 3 May 2010
Featured on GeoLog, the official blog of the European Geosciences Union
Categories
Location
- North America (726)
- Northern America (568)
- United States of America (383)
- Exact location (-148.4322 W, 70.1836 N)
Tags
sun, atmospheric optics, sundogs, tundra
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Camera:
Canon Mark-II
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Credit: Yongwon Kim (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)
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Konstantinos Kourtidis 12 years, 10 months ago
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!