Sun Dog

We awoke to sparkling frost - though no sign of snow - much to the disappointment of the boys. Despite the beautiful winter weather there was lots of boring stuff to be done today - a trip to town to sort out finances, a first look at Christmas shopping (though we didn't but anything), report writing and proof-reading. Consequently we didn't get out to walk the dogs till late afternoon.

We went down to Ferry Meadows in the hope of getting a good sunset shot along the river. After completely failing yesterday, we actually arrived in time today, and several nice photographs were taken. But as we walked along one of the lakes, we noticed that there appeared to be two setting suns!

I had some vague idea that this might be to do with ice crystals in the atmosphere, but it wasn't until we got home that I discovered we had seen a 'sun dog' or parhelion. The following explanation is taken from Wikipedia:

Sundogs may appear as a coloured patch of light to the left or right of the sun, 22° distant and at the same distance above the horizon as the sun, and in ice halos. They are apparently best seen and are most conspicuous when the sun is low and are formed by plate-shaped hexagonal ice crystals in high and cold cirrus clouds or, during very cold weather, by ice crystals called diamond dust drifting in the air at low levels. These crystals act as prisms, bending the light rays passing through them by 22°. If the crystals are randomly oriented, a complete ring around the sun is seen ? a halo. But often, as the crystals sink through the air they become vertically aligned, so sunlight is refracted horizontally ? in this case, sundogs are seen.

This one was quite spectacular, and so had to become today's blip. It's probably best seen large.