Residents in the Chinese city of Fuyu, were stunned this week when they were greeted not by the usual morning sunlight but what appeared to be three suns shining brightly.
Two large glowing orbs appeared to be flanking the Sun on either side, dwarfing our star in the process, on the last day of 2019 in the skies above the country’s northeastern Jilin Province.
Three “suns” appear on the sky over northeast China☀️☀️☀️This spectacular view is caused by a natural phenomenon called “sun dog,” also known as mock suns or parhelia, as a result of light refraction through ice crystals. https://t.co/N31a8Um6B2pic.twitter.com/ZbBJLYu8gB
— CGTN (@CGTNOfficial) January 2, 2020
These “artificial suns” hung in the sky for roughly 20 minutes before disappearing. Now, given that the Sun provides plenty of light and heat for our planet on its own, how could it be that we didn’t all burn up in a fiery apocalypse if two additional suns suddenly burst into the sky?
It turns out the ‘extra’ suns were actually caused by an atmospheric optical phenomenon known as a sun dog, formally referred to as a parhelion.
A sun dog is caused by the refraction of sunlight by ice crystals in Earth’s atmosphere, which usually create glowing orbs in the sky roughly 22 degrees to left and right of the sun, at the same altitude above the horizon.
The temperature needs to be quite cold, roughly 20 degrees below zero Celsius, when the Sun is still quite low in the sky, for the spectacular if mildly terrifying phenomenon to occur.
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