This beautiful picture was captured at sunrise on a cold and still Park City morning. Called sundogs, this phenomenon is caused by sunlight being refracted through ice crystals.
Taken by Don Brown with an Olympus OM1 and a 28mm lens, this image shows two parhelia on each side of the sun and one just visible at the top of the image. The ice crystals must be preferentially oriented horizontally and the sun-observer line of sight must be close to horizontal in order to see such a site.
Sundogs are also know as mock suns, and are similar to halos (refraction through randomy oriented crystals) and sun pillars (reflection off of horizontally oriented crystals). |