On Sunday, Apr 27, 2003, at 22:42 US/Mountain, Patrick Wiggins wrote:
SLAS member Roger Butz caught an unusual sundog on film a few years back.
While the picture has been submitted to the SLAS site, for now you can see it as image #003 at
I was very curious about this photo of Roger Butz' having not seen anything like it myself. I found a good website ( http://www.sundog.clara.co.uk/atoptics/phenom.htm ) which has examples- both photographic and simulated - of all sorts of atmospheric phenomena. In Roger's photo you see the 22 degree radius Halo and another halo easily seen on the left side of the photo coming out of his 'fist'. This arc continues through his fist and can be traced through the bottom right portion of the photo. (The other 'arcs' in the photo - top right, left, and again near the right side of the fist- appear to be only clouds.) This second halo is the unusual bit. From the photos available on the website this second arc appears to be a Parhelic Circle, though there are no parhelia (sundogs) as far as I can tell in the photo. The Parhelic Circle is always very white (compared to the colors in the 22 degree Halo) and often mistaken for clouds. When it is complete it goes all around the sky. http://www.sundog.clara.co.uk/halo/circum.htm http://www.sundog.clara.co.uk/halo/parcirc.htm If anyone else has any other ideas and photographic examples of what the second halo is I would be very interested to hear. Dave Bennett