Sun Dogs

I had one of those "homeschool mommy" attacks on Sunday morning, where you get all aflutter over a teachable moment and just gotta find somebody to bubble at! I was out jogging (yes, I know it was cold!) and saw the most awesome sun dogs. I have tried to show them to my youngest on previous occasions, but I've never been convinced that she's actually seen them. Between her poor vision and her lack of understanding, it seems that she's always just "agreed" that "yeah, Mom, that's pretty neat." But Sunday morning, those sundogs were so huge, and there were no clouds smudging up the sky -- there was no way to miss those sun dogs! The dogs were massive and spreading their rainbows out. The right one had rays pouring off it to span an arc of about 50-60 degrees, and the left one covered about 30 degrees of an arc around the sun.

These are rare enough that I went in and interrupted Sunday school to show the kids. I feel a little guilty over that: sun dogs shouldn't be trumping the study of God's word. But gosh, how often do kids (especially kids who live in town and thus have an obstructed view of the sky) get to see uncommon sights in the heavens?

The parhelions were so glorious the other day that I couldn't help but remember the Shakespearean lines in Henry VI, recounting the story of the Battle of Mortimer's Cross which occurred in 1461 at Herefordshire, during the War of the Roses. It's easy to see why the Yorkists might consider such a sight to be a "sign from God."