2011. február 28., hétfő

Fake sun again

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A little longer gap since the last post. The upcoming halo book occupied me during the last days as I made last adjustments before submitting it last night to the publisher for layout.

Anyway, the issue here is fake sun again. The photos above were taken by Olli Sälevä in Rovaniemi. The first two are fresh, from 22 February. After I had written about the fake sun, Olli started to look for it and took these photos. He saw a bright yellow fake sun that day near the sunset, but parking the car and getting the camera ready took 2-3 minutes during which time the real sun already appeared and the fake sun waned. But you still can get the idea here. A bit later the sun got again behind cloud and a spot of light was seen above sun.

The two last Olli's photos are older, from 25 April 2008, showing a beautiful sky with Strato/Altocumulus and pillar. Again here is a situation where fake sun might appear.

Now that I have written already four posts about the fake sun and seen some photos of candidates, it is time to say what I think about the issue. To save some dignity with the phenomenon - so that we would not start reporting every brightening in sun pillar as fake sun - we should only report as fake sun those that have the potential to be taken as real sun. This also takes into an account cases where the real sun is seen, but in which the fake sun is so bright that it could be taken as real sun if the real sun was behind the cloud. By this criteria, I think, the fake sun is a rare phenomenon. And one needs an account from the observer of the sighting, determining it alone from the photos is not enough. The photos by Julie Broson show a true fake sun, because at first for a moment Julie did not know which one was the real sun. Neither was, as the real sun was behind the cloud.

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