Sundog Simulator: Astronomical Computing

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Astronomical Computing

Edited by Stuart J. Goldman

As the Sun sets behind ice crystals at high altitude, a pair of parhelia or sundogs follow it down. Such displays are fairly common but can vary in intensity and color. Jari Piiki photographed these brilliant mock Suns in Finland on February 2, 1996.

Sundog Simulator

COMMON SIGHT in the sky


when the Sun hangs low above
the horizon is the familiar sundog
phenomenon. Bright spots appear on one
or both sides of the Sun, hence their
classical name parhelion, which translates to beside the Sun. The more common moniker arises because the bright
spots remain at a fixed angle (22) from
the Sun. Thus they follow, or dog, our
star as it rises or sets.
Like their atmospheric cousin, the rainbow, sundogs originate from the interaction of light and water in the atmosphere. In this case, however, the water is
ice, whose crystals come in a plethora of
shapes depending on temperature and
humidity. Some are classified as dendrites, the six-armed asterisk-shaped crystals most associated with snowflakes.

Parhelia Optics
Sundog
Ice crystal
Sun

22

44

Sundogs arise because sunlight is refracted


by flat, hexagonal ice crystals in our atmosphere. As light passes through the crystal,
it is bent 22. Tilted crystals and internal
reflections often smear the parhelia.

1996 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Others appear as tiny Greek columns or


little needles.
Sundogs are produced by plate crystals, which look as if they were stamped
out with a hexagonal cookie cutter (if
you can imagine one smaller than a millimeter across). As illustrated in the diagram at left, sunlight is refracted as it
passes from the air, through the ice, and
back into the air. The refraction makes
the redirected sunlight appear to come
from elsewhere in the sky.
For a cloud of these hexagonal crystals, the most common angle of refraction turns out to be 22; thus light will
seem to be concentrated at that separation from the Sun at the same elevation
in the sky. Plates in a variety of orientations spread out the image, because the
exiting sunlight comes out at slightly difJanuary 1997 Sky & Telescope 103

10 REM SUNDOG.BAS by Rodney Kubesh

210 AN=I*PI/180!

430 PAINT (SX,SY)

20 REM

220 GOSUB 460

440 LINE (-125,0)-(125,0)

30 SCREEN 9

230 REM Tilt it back

450 END

40 WINDOW (-125,80)-(125,-10)

240 AN=-AN

460 REM Tilt subroutine

50 PI=3.14159

250 GOSUB 580

470 IR%=0

60 REM Choose solar elevation angle

260 REM Next face, 60 deg. tilt

480 MU=N/NP

70 INPUT "Solar elevation in

270 N=NP: NP=1!

490 LI=L0: NI=N0

280 AN=-(60-I)*PI/180!

500 PH=SIN(AN): HP=COS(AN)

80 LN=COS(SA*PI/180)

290 GOSUB 460

510 L0=LI*HP+NI*PH

90 LM=COS((90-SA)*PI/180)

300 REM tilt it back

520 N0=NI*HP-LI*PH

100 FOR J=1 TO 6

310 AN=-AN

530 LS=MU*L0 : MS=MU*M0

110 EL=SA-(J-1)*.1

320 GOSUB 580

540 IN=MU*MU*(N0*N0-1!)+1!

120 FOR I=0 TO 90 STEP 2

330 IF IR%<>0 THEN GOTO 390

550 IF IN>=0 THEN NS=IN^.5

130 N0=COS(EL*PI/180)

340 REM Plot point on image plane

560 IF IN<0 THEN IR%=1

140 M0=COS((90-EL)*PI/180)

350 XS=-200!*L0/N0

570 RETURN

150 IF ABS(1!-M0*M0-N0*N0)<.000001

360 YS=200!*MS/N0

580 REM Tiltback subroutine

370 PSET (XS,YS)

590 LI=LS: NI=NS

160 GOTO 180

380 PSET (-XS,YS)

600 PH=SIN(AN): HP=COS(AN)

170 L0=(1!-M0*M0-N0*N0)^.5

390 NEXT I

610 L0=LI*HP+NI*PH

180 REM First face, introduce tilt

400 NEXT J

620 N0=NI*HP-LI*PH

190 N=1!

410 SX=0: SY=200*LM/LN

630 M0=MS

200 NP=1.31

420 CIRCLE (SX,SY),2

640 RETURN

degrees";SA

THEN L0=0!

ferent angles. This often gives the sundog a tail.


In another similarity to a rainbow, refraction in the crystal acts just like a
prism and disperses white sunlight into
its component colors. However, a sundogs hues are typically fewer and less
saturated. Rays traveling through the

randomly oriented plates overlap, thereby washing out the colors. Usually, the
evident range of hues in parhelia is red
to yellow. Even so, the sundogs may be
very bright (hence another colloquialism mock Sun).
Sundogs can be seen year-round and
worldwide. In his book Atmospheric Ha-

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104 Sky & Telescope January 1997

1996 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

los (American Geophysical Union, 1994),


Walter Tape reports seeing 60 displays
per year in Wisconsin. Be on the lookout for sundogs when cirrus clouds are
in the Suns vicinity. Because of their
great altitude, wispy cirrus is composed
of ice crystals, not water droplets as in
other clouds. The 22 separation between

Sun and its sundog is roughly the angular distance between your outstretched
thumb and pinky finger at arms length.
(Of course, the usual caution against
looking directly at the Sun applies!)
THE PROGRAM
Although the physics of light rays interacting with an ice crystal is straightforward consisting of the laws of reflection and refraction (Snells Law)
geometry greatly complicates the situation. Desiring a simpler approach, I decided to attack the problem with raytracing equations used in the design of
optical systems (see, for example, Telescope Optics: Evaluation and Design by
Harrie G. J. Rutten and Martin A. M.
van Venrooij; Willmann-Bell, 1988). Light
rays can be traced through any system
of lenses, mirrors, and prisms to determine their directions and locations after
they emerge. The results may be displayed in a spot diagram, which simulates the appearance of the resulting optical image.
The prism in this case is the hexagonal ice plate, which is assumed to be
horizontal. As surprising as it seems, the
crystals fall flat just think of a falling
leaf, or drop a sheet of paper. Actually,
plate crystals usually have a slight tilt,

Mir and Shuttle Imaged


from Boston
When Ron Dantowitz of Bostons
Museum of Science described how
he tracks and images Earth-orbiting
satellites (August issue, page 86), he
promised he would look at the next
rendezvous of the Space Shuttle and
Mir. This remarkable view taken during daylight on August 19th shows Atlantis (belly toward the telescope)
docked to Mir as they flew about 400
kilometers overhead at some 28,000
km per hour. Dantowitz reports that
NASA flight controllers transmitted
the image to the shuttle to share with the astronauts, including Shannon Lucid,
who was about to return to Earth after spending a record-breaking six months
aboard Mir. This and other ground-based spacecraft images including one
looking into the payload bay of the undocked Atlantis are posted on Dantowitzs World Wide Web site (http://www.skyshow.com/).
which smears the sundog, giving it an
enhanced vertical extent. For the sake
of simplicity, I ignored this effect.
As specified by the Fresnel equations,
some light is reflected at each ice-air surface. There is also an intensity factor due
to the relative cross-sectional area of the
beam that is intercepted by the crystal.

These intensity calculations are also omitted to keep the program as simple as
possible.
When the program is executed, it will
produce an image by tracing 276 rays
for a Sun 0 to 19 above the horizon.
The tilt subroutine presents one face
of the ice crystal to a light ray, then

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January 1997 Sky & Telescope 105

The graphical output


from Rodney Kubeshs
program on page 104
creates a simple representation of sundogs,
with the Sun drawn in
the center of the
screen. Modifications
could be made to include color and account
for light loss in the ice
crystals.

traces the ray through the crystal. The


angle between the ray and the crystal
face is labeled I in the main program
and is varied from 0 to 90 to allow for
all possible crystal orientations with respect to the incoming solar beam. The
tiltback subroutine then calculates the
angle at which the ray exits on the other
side of the crystal. The program will run
on an IBM or compatible computer with
at least EGA graphics.
The refractive index is chosen to be

1.31, which is appropriate for orange


light. Users can modify the program by
varying this value slightly, perhaps to
plot different colored spots.
RODNEY J. KUBESH
2548 Osburn Ave.
Oskaloosa, IA 52577
kubesh@worf.netins.net
Kubesh is an adjunct professor of physics at
Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa. His interests include telescope design and atmospheric
optics.

Whats Happening?
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LANETARY ASTRONOMER Heidi Hammel waxed appreciative about


the value of the U.S. Naval Observatorys Astronomical Almanac in last
Septembers issue (page 52). That sentiment certainly applies here at Sky &
Telescope too. When the 1997 edition (see page 68) was a bit late coming out of
the Government Printing Office, various editors were disappointed and concerned as they put together this first issue of 1997.
Is there salvation online? In the case of the Astronomical Almanac, much of the data about the Earth,
Moon, and Sun can be found at the World Wide Web
(WWW) site for USNOs Astronomical Applications
Department (http://riemann.usno.navy.mil/AA/data/
By Stuart J. Goldman
online.html). There youll discover years worth of information on the phases of the Moon, the times of sunrise and sunset, and the
date of Easter. Details are offered in either precalculated tables or customizable
interactive request forms.
However, information about Sun, Earth, and Moon is about all you get at
USNO. If you want details about the planets, the software publisher Zephyr Services provides planet data for the current month at their WWW site (http://www.
zephyrs.com/) as a sample of how one of their products performs. For planetary
visibility, jump over to David Harpers Astronomy Pages (http://www.maths.qmw.
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If your almanac desires are more basic and all you want is a good calendar,
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And once youve wandered through CalendarLand and found just the right
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Chris Wetherills Sub-Universe (http://www.uccs.edu/~cwetheri/Astro/) offers This
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Astronomy
Online

106 Sky & Telescope January 1997

1996 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

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