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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!akgua!mcnc!duke!ucf-cs!giles
From: giles@ucf-cs.UUCP (Bruce Giles)
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: Strange Phenomena & colors in the sky
Message-ID: <1199@ucf-cs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 24-Feb-84 18:35:26 EST
Article-I.D.: ucf-cs.1199
Posted: Fri Feb 24 18:35:26 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 25-Feb-84 08:08:55 EST
Organization: University of Central Florida
Lines: 54



At the beach today (well, this IS Florida!) I observed some rather
interesting phenomena around the sun.  In no particular order (listed
here, that is) I saw:

(1):  A ring around the sun, approximately 5 degrees out, with the spectrum
      arranged as ringlets.  I never saw more than a third of the ring at
      one time, possibily because it was fairly faint.  NOTE:  red was the
      inner color.

(2):  About 7 degrees from the sun, a very brilliant spotch of spectrum
      maybe 50% larger than the sun.  Once again, red was the inner color.
      Furthermore, I saw a fainter white band passing through this region
      radially outward from the sun; I would say it passed from around 5
      degrees out to nearly 15 degrees out.

(3):  Radial bands of red, with a nearby radial band of blue-green.  These
      bands were by far the faintest and poorest defined of the images.
      They were perhaps 1 degree wide by 5 degrees long, starting from
      around 4 degrees out.


I saw items (1) and (2) together several times, but there was always a
large amount of separation between the two images.  I saw (in pieces) the
full ring of #1, and saw #2 at 4 o'clock and 8 o'clock, but only those
two times.   Finally, I saw #3 about 30 minutes after I last saw either
of the other two images, and no other anomolies were noticed.

The weather was:  Air temp  ~23-25 degrees celcius, high altitude
intermittant cloud cover, lower and heavier cloud cover at 1600, phenomena
observed from 1400 to 1500.  I had difficulty observing the images because
the entire sky within about 10 degrees of the sun was a fairly bright
white.  Finally, a cold front passed through the region two days ago.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have a fairly good idea of what caused (1) (i.e. high altitude ice
crystals), but am totally baffled as to what caused (2) and (3). *IF*
we presuppose highly alined ice crystals, I could see what caused them, 
but that would (a) eliminate (1) because it requires random ice crystals, 
and (b) not explain how the image would disappear from one place and
reappear 5 minutes later on the other side of the sun.  (The direction of
travel was north--> south; the ground wind direction was south--> north).


Any ideas?


ave discordia				going bump in the night ...
bruce giles

decvax!ucf-cs!giles			university of central florida
giles.ucf-cs@Rand-Relay			orlando, florida 32816