What is a sun dog? What causes them?
Have you ever looked up in the sky and noticed colored spots on either one or both sides of the sun? Bright spots that looked like tiny rainbows? If so, you probably saw a sun dog, also known as mock sun or parhelia, which means "with the sun."
These optical illusions are created by the refraction of sunlight through ice crystals in the atmosphere.
For a sun dog to form, there must be hexagonal ice crystals in the sky that float parallel to the ground. The sunlight will refract through the ice crystal, which then acts like a prism to scatter and bend the colors.
Due to the different wavelengths correlating to the colors of the rainbow, the colors typically go from red (closest to the sun) to blue (outside edges) and you can usually find the sun dog spots about 22 degrees left or right (or in both directions) from the center of the sun.
The best time to try to see a sun dog is when there are cirrus clouds in the sky and around sunrise or sunset.
Also, this weather phenomenon is more likely to happen during the cold winter months. If you ever see a sun dog in the sky, snap a picture and send it to your First Alert Weather team.