BHUBANESWAR: It was eye-catching for sure. A little past noon on Tuesday, a sparkling rainbow encircled the Sun drawing hundreds of denizens out of their homes and offices to watch the spectacle. Was it a rainbow or a celestial phenomenon? The morning was dry, though cloudy. With no rain in the past 12 hours or so, was a rainbow possible? Meteorologists explained it to be a solar halo, also called ‘sun dog’ or ‘parhelia’, in scientific terms. It is an atmospheric phenomenon which creates bright spots of light on the sky, mostly around the Sun.“The solar halos or sun dogs are usually seen when there are high cirrus clouds overhead. Since these clouds are made up of tiny ice crystals they refract sunlight just like a prism and create a rainbow halo around the Sun,” an expert said. Since the ice crystals are plate shaped and move downwards with their faces horizontal, the collective glint generated when the sunrays pass through them create the bright spots or the halo. In fact, such halos occur with the moon too. “It is a phenomenon which occurs worldwide but only when the conditions are in place,” said the expert.
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