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                           Astronomy Picture of the Day   
      
       Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our   
         fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation   
                       written by a professional astronomer.   
      
                                 2021 December 28   
      
                               Sun Halo over Sweden   
       Video Credit & Copyright: Hokan Hammar (Vemdalen Ski Resort, SkiStar)   
      
      Explanation: What's happened to the Sun? Sometimes it looks like the   
      Sun is being viewed through a giant lens. In the featured video,   
      however, there are actually millions of tiny lenses: ice crystals.   
      Water may freeze in the atmosphere into small, flat, six-sided, ice   
      crystals. As these crystals flutter to the ground, much time is spent   
      with their faces flat and parallel to the ground. An observer may find   
      themselves in the same plane as many of the falling ice crystals near   
      sunrise or sunset. During this alignment, each crystal can act like a   
      miniature lens, refracting sunlight into our view and creating   
      phenomena like parhelia, the technical term for sundogs. The featured   
      video was taken in late 2017 on the side of a ski hill at the Vemdalen   
      Ski Resort in central Sweden. Visible in the center is the most direct   
      image of the Sun, while two bright sundogs glow prominently from both   
      the left and the right. Also visible is the bright 22 degree halo -- as   
      well as the rarer and much fainter 46 degree halo -- also created by   
      sunlight refracting through atmospheric ice crystals.   
      
                         Tomorrow's picture: giant storms   
        __________________________________________________________________   
      
          Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)   
               NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.   
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                         A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC   
                                & Michigan Tech. U.   
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