Here is another illusion found on the Astronomy Picture of the Day. I stumbled upon it via Tricks and Illusions.
Credit & Copyright: Jim Hoida
Explanation: Today, the Sun rises due east at the Equinox, a geocentric astronomical event that occurs twice a year. To celebrate, consider this view of the rising Sun and a lovely set of ice halos recorded on a cold winter morning near Green Bay, Wisconsin, USA, planet Earth. Produced by sunlight shining through common atmospheric ice crystals with hexagonal cross-sections, such halos can actually be seen more often than rainbows. The remarkable sunrise picture captures a beautiful assortment of the types most frequently seen, including a sun pillar (center) just above the rising Sun surrounded by a 22 degree halo arc. Completing a triple sunrise illusion, sundogs appear at the far left and far right edges of the 22 degree arc. An upper tangent arc is also just visible at the very top of the view.
Erik Axdahl
(c)2005
Erik has a blog called The Chronicles of Spaceman Axdahl and he had this to say about this photo he shot.
"I was poking through my hard drive and found this delicious morsel that I took last Winter outside of New Ulm, MN with my four year-old Canon Powershot A20 digicam.
What you see is a parhelion, better known as sun dogs.
Sun dogs are produced when the clouds between the Sun and the observer contain ice crystals rather than droplets. They always occur at twenty-two degrees on either side of the sun.
Being a nerd, when I first saw this I panicked and honked madly at the car I was following to pull over so I could take this shot. My day was then officially made."
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