Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 February 1912 — Brilliant Sun Dog Visibile Early Part of Sunday Morning. [ARTICLE]

Brilliant Sun Dog Visibile Early Part of Sunday Morning.

A cold weather phenomenon of rare beauty and brilliancy was seen by many Jasper county people Sunday morning. Our attention was called to it by Mrs. George A. Williams and we found it to be the finest of its sort we have ever seen. The phenomenon was a parhelion or sun dog, which the weather bureau explains to be the refraction and reflection of the sun’s light by minute particles of ice in the upper atmosphere. It is similar to a rainbow, not so large in diameter, not so vari-colored and not so clearly outlined at the upper part, but extremely brilliant on both sides of the sun, the lower segments * hidden by the horizon. The brilliant image did not fade away until the sun was more than two hours high and many who saw it pronounced it the most brilliant they had ever witnessed. The weatheriqpn explained in Chicago that the phenomenon occurs when there happens to be an intersection of two solar halos of different radii. An ordinary halo is common enough but is rarely visible to the naked eye. It is when two halos in* tersect that we have a sun dog. The sun dog does not serve as a forecast for future weather as commonly claimed. It occurs when the weather is cold but does not indicate continued cofif. It has no bearing on future events.