I’m just back from an evening stroll in the Peak District, catching the last of the sun.
On my walk I met some leaping lambs and also some slightly rarer creatures: a pair of sun dogs.
Have a look at the bright, rainbow-coloured patches either side of the sun in the photo below:
Sun dogs, also known as ‘mock suns’ and ‘parhelia’, can form when the sun is refracted by ice crystals in the higher clouds, like cirrus or cirrostratus. They typically form 22 degrees, or just over two extended fist widths, from the sun, either side of it and level with the sun.
The beautiful colours are a bit clearer in this zoomed in picture:
And, not forgetting the leaping lamb, clearly a fan of sun dogs.
