Tim November – Grace Media Group – photographed a rainbow around the sun, over the West Tennessee Sportsplex, Sunday.

Sometimes referred to as a solar halo or a sun halo, it is viewed as a ‘quite rare occurrence.’

In a typical year, there may only be one or two such sightings. These rainbows are caused by light passing through ice crystals in cirrus clouds, which act as a prism that refracts the light into its spectral colors.

A sun rainbow – better known as a  sundog is a concentrated patch of sunlight that is occasionally seen to the right or the left of the sun or even on both sides of our star in the sky simultaneously.

Also called mock suns or parhelia, meaning “with the sun,” according to the National Weather Service.

Sundogs are part of a family of atmospheric optical illusions including moon haloes and the closely related sun haloes. All of these phenomena are caused by the refraction of sunlight by ice crystals in the atmosphere.

Sundogs typically appear as a pair of patches of light with subtle colors which manifest at the same altitude over the horizon as the sun. They can appear in a variety of forms, sometimes as colorful spots, or other times, so intense and bright they appear to be two additional suns in the sky.

Sundogs are formed when light passes through hexagonal plate crystals of ice, suspended in cirrus or cirrostratus clouds located at altitudes of around 20,000 feet (6,000 meters) and higher, up to 40,000 feet (12,000 meters).

These ice crystals can also be found much closer to the ground in extremely cold climates where temperatures drop below -22 degrees Fahrenheit (-30 degrees Celsius) as a meteorological phenomenon called “diamond dust.”

As ice crystals drift downwards their hexagonal faces are orientated approximately horizontally. Rays of sunlight enter through a side edge face and then exit through another edge face that is inclined 60 degrees to the first.

(PHOTO:Sun rainbow – courtesy Tim November – Grace Media Group)