Science is all around us

By: Simone Burzacott-Gorman

Whilst on the ‘Monkey Bridge’ Observation Deck 7, today we captured a ‘Sun Dog’, the small rainbow patch amongst the clouds. This is a physics phenomenon formally called a parhelion in meteorology. It is caused by ice crystals in the upper atmosphere refracting light in a halo around the sun. There were two rainbow patches either side of the sun at about 22^o but the window divisions of the observation deck didn’t allow a photo of both side in one image and the halo effect was lost in the gathering clouds.