KAZAN, Russia, March 17 (UPI) — A rare optical illusion giving the appearance of three suns in the sky was caught on camera over a Russian city where ice crystals gathered in the atmosphere.
The video shows what appears to be three suns in the sky over the city of Kazan, but the “suns” to the left and right of the middle star are actually optical illusions known as “sundogs.”
A sundog is created when the light from the sun is reflected by ice crystals in the atmosphere.
The triple sun, recorded in January, featured illusion suns much larger than those recorded in December over Winnipeg, Manitoba, following a large snow storm.
It’s not a 22 degree angle of sunrays “bouncing” off ice crystals, it’s the back of the sun reflecting off the sky dome ceiling (firmament), converging near the Earth’s surface and seen because it is converging in preciptation in the air. That’s the empirical position. Also, they are not rare, even in the Atmospheric Halos textbook they say they are ‘common’. Typical errors of non-scientific mass media.
Thanks for the spectacular photo and story about the Sundog, circular rainbow. As it happens, there is a considerable body of Native American lore about this sky sign, sometimes called the Sunbow or the Whirling Rainbow. Day 7 of the online journal ‘Odyssey of the 8th Fire’ relates some key elements of that lore, but you have to scroll about 1/2 way down the page to find it: http://www.8thfire.net/Day_7.html