Sundogs are the product of light passing through crystals.
The particular shape and orientation of the crystals can have a drastic visual impact for the viewer, producing a longer tail and changing the range of colors one sees.
The relative height of the sun in the sky shifts the distance the sundogs appear to be on either side of the sun.
Varying climactic conditions on other planets in our solar system produce halos with up to four sundogs from those planets’ perspectives.
Sundogs have been speculated about and discussed since ancient times and written records describing the various attributes of our sun date back the Egyptians and Greeks.
Light Pillars
Light pillars appear as eerily upright luminous columns in the sky, beacons cast into the air above without an apparent source..
These are visible when light reflects just right off of ice crystals from either the sun (as in the two top images above) or from artificial ground sources such as street or park lights.
Despite their appearance as near-solid columns of light, the effect is entirely created by our own relative viewpoint.
Fire Whirls
Fire whirls (also known as fire devils or tornadoes) appear in or around raging fires when the right combination of climactic conditions is present.
Fire whirls can be spawned by other natural events such as earthquakes and thunderstorms, and can be incredibly dangerous, in some cases spinning well out of the zone of a fire itself to cause devastation and death in a radius not even reached by heat or flame.
Fire whirls have been known to be nearly a mile high, have wind speeds of over 100 miles per hour and to last for 20 or more minutes.
Lenticular Clouds
Ever wonder the truth about UFOs?
Avoided by traditional pilots but loved by sailplane aviators, lenticular clouds are masses of cloud with strong internal uplift that can drive a motorless flyer to high elevations.
Their shape is quite often mistaken for a mysterious flying object or the artificial cover for one.
Generally, lenticular clouds are formed as wind speeds up while moving around a large land object such as a mountain.
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