last night so it was no surprise this morning to have to
do a bit of a search to see if there was still coloured fluid in the thermometer.
The picture on the right was was taken exactly at 0900 and you can see the plume
from a heating system rising vertically into the cold morning air and being illuminated
by the rising sun. The picture above is a few minutes later when the sun actually
slid over the horizon.In the dark foreground looking through the goal posts is a little cold morning drama being played out. The contractor who knocked down TUCs is still busily hauling the rubble away with two large trucks and though you can not see it in these frames they have the back hoe running and are busy with a tiger torch attempting to encourage one of the Semi-tractors to life.
Water vapour
forms minuit crystals in the air with low temperatures like these and the sun's light
is refracted off of these particles. Essentially it is a giant lens flair and from
various angles one discovers that the part we see in these pictures is only one side
of a full circle. From an aircraft you can often see these as complete halos as
you look down on a sunny but cold day. This phenomena is called "sun dogs"
and in this three picture sequence you can see the brightness of these increasing
from one picture to the other and you can also see the vertical progress up the sky
as the sun comes marginally above the morning horizon. The picture below left is
with a video camera and the white flecks are the ice crystals suspended in the air
and below right is the sundog seen with the video camera.
