Sundogs Research Paper

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Sundogs. The beautiful work of God displayed in the sky for every eye to see. Every winter, we see them in all of their marvelous beauty in the sky above us. Yet, we barely even notice them. We may smile or comment, but in reality, we don’t really know the mysteries behind them. Because usually we are too busy. I mean, over 11,000,000 pieces of information come in contact with our five senses every second of everyday. So we don’t become overwhelmed, our brain sifts through them at warp speed, separating what we need to know from what we can safely ignore. Thus, 99.9 percent of all incoming data is blithely discarded. So, why should we care? I’m about to tell you why. Maybe Sundogs remind you of snowmobiling through the woods on a beautiful summer day. Or Nana’s house where you drank warm Hot Chocolate and she told you stories and gave you advice. Sundogs make winter mysterious and almost magical in a way. It leaves you feeling warm inside and fresh with excitement. Yet, we hardly know how they are formed. How are they formed? Sundogs are made from fairy dust (or hexagonal plates floating in the air). The crystals act as prisms, bending the light of the sun and making it seem as if there are rainbows on either side. The rainbows or halos typically form 22° away from the sun. If the crystals are randomly oriented, then it makes a complete halo …show more content…

And sometimes they can almost seem brighter that the sun. Sundogs are red-colored at the side nearest the sun. Farther out the colors grade through oranges to blue. However, the colors overlap considerably and so are muted, never pure or saturated. Whenever most people see anything around the sun, they call it a Sundog. This is not true, as there are many things that can appear to look like Sundogs even though they aren’t. Parhelion, Halos, Mock Suns, Sun Spokes and others are some of the examples that people confuse Sundogs

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