what are sun dogs

Sun dogs are bright, rainbow‑tinted spots of light that appear to the left and/or right of the Sun when its light passes through ice crystals high in the atmosphere. They are an atmospheric optical phenomenon, not extra suns, and are technically known as parhelia or “mock suns.”

What sun dogs look like

• Patches of light about 22° to the left and right of the Sun, often at the same height above the horizon.

• Colors usually fade from red nearest the Sun through orange to bluish on the outer side, like a muted piece of rainbow.

• They can appear as a pair flanking the Sun and sometimes seem so bright they resemble two extra suns in the sky.

How they form

• Sun dogs happen when sunlight is refracted (bent) by millions of tiny, plate‑shaped hexagonal ice crystals in high clouds such as cirrus or cirrostratus, or in very cold “diamond dust” near the ground.

• As these crystals tend to fall with their flat faces roughly horizontal, they act like tiny prisms that bend light by a minimum of about 22°, placing the bright spots to either side of the Sun.

• If the crystals are oriented more randomly, the same process produces a 22° halo around the Sun instead of distinct sun dogs.

When and where you can see them

• Sun dogs can appear anywhere in the world, in any season, but they are most noticeable when the Sun is low in the sky, such as in the early morning or late afternoon on cold days.

• Over regions like Western Europe, they can occur on dozens of days each year, though many displays are faint and easy to miss.

Name and folklore

• The term “sun dog” is linked to older words for mist or dew and to the idea of “false suns” that follow or accompany the real Sun.

• In different places they have local names, such as “weather dogs” or “weather’s eye,” and historically they were sometimes seen as omens of changing weather.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.