At the risk of being labeled an alien conspiracy theorist, I’m
curious as to what I saw in the western sky yesterday evening. As I left my office building at about 6:00pm
last night, I noticed a strange orange/yellowish glow about 20-25 degrees clockwise
of the setting sun. It most definitely
wasn’t the sun and wasn’t a rainbow either (see pics below - click for larger version).
As the horizon cloud cover increased it disappeared but I am
at a loss as to what the meteorological event was. Was it Moon-related? There was what is called a “Moonbow” occurrence
last night (check out ‘Moonbow,’ Hunter’s Moon light up D.C. sky), but it was
still plenty light out.
My top three speculations of what caused this are:
Sun-related:
The sun
often emits solar flares and other crazy magnetic storms that affect our atmosphere visually occasionally (i.e. Aurora-Borealis effect). Perhaps this was a
solar event that interacted with the atmosphere in a weird sort of way?
Alien-related:
My
first thought was the dual sunsets on Tattooine. Then I began to think about the movie 2001: A
Space Odyssey and its sequel 2010: Odyssey Two, starring Roy Schneider, in which the planet Saturn
implodes at the end creating a new “sun”…faintly visible from Earth. Regardless, otherworldly thoughts did enter my
mind in trying to reconcile the event.
Religion-related:
My
other thought, and one I wished most to be true, was that this was a
spiritually related event in which God was making himself known in some
tangible, atmospheric way. Perhaps it was even Christ's prophesied Second-Coming. But I tempered my expectation on that being
the case because Matthew 24:27 describes the event more akin to lightening than
static orange glows, “For as lightning that comes from the
east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.”
Whatever the cause, I’m still curious as to what the phenomenon was. I’ve searched the interwebs for answers, but haven’t really come up with anything concrete yet. Maybe I’m the next “Bernadette of Lourdes” and I don’t even know it lol.
UPDATE 10/12/11: Mystery Explained
Well it
turns out there what I saw Monday wasn’t unfortunately alien or religious
related after all; though the real reason is still kind of cool. A somewhat rare atmospheric phenomenon called
a “sundog”, or parhelion event to be proper, is what I saw.
A sun dog or sundog is an
atmospheric phenomenon that creates bright spots of light in the sky, often on
a luminous ring or halo on either side of the sun. Exactly what I saw.
Sundogs may appear as a colored patch of light to the left or right of the sun, 22° distant and at the same distance above the horizon as the sun, and in ice halos. They can be seen anywhere in the world during any season, but they are not always obvious or bright. Sundogs are best seen and are most conspicuous when the sun is low.
When a fellow weather enthusiast mentioned what I saw being
a sundog (based on seeing my photos), and I looked up the definition, I knew
that described it to a “T”. I even
estimated a 20-25° radial, parallel divergence from the sun itself, which was
pretty much on target :) The only reason I
don’t think the sundog looked like the example picture below was that there was
low cloud cover on the horizon and my vantage point was low as well; so I did
not get the whole picture. That and I
believe the phenomenon is caused by upper-atmosphere water crystal interaction,
hence the reason the lower clouds blocked a lot of it.
Anyways, I feel much better now knowing
what it was. I was incredulous all
Monday evening because I really had no explanation whatsoever, except the wild
ones aforementioned in my prior post.
Doing some more research on sundogs reveals some cool history and
pictures as well.
Very cool!! I love discovering new things like this. It almost sounds like an atmospheric version of a camera lens flare. Or the ice crystal halo you see around the moon on clear nights... thanks for passing along your findings!
ReplyDeleteHowever, Mulder isn't buying your explanation...
Thanks for the note Dan!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I want to believe as well ;)