Icebow in Russia

(Courtesy of a forwarded mail from Ng Kok Yeaw who is currently working in Shanghai, China)

Again a phenomena of multiple suns has appeared in the Russian sky. It's not something unique, it happened before and it looks really nice. Well I guess this is an example of weather phenomena called "icebow", some case of "sun halo", which appears on high altitudes (artcic/subarctic) on both hemispheres.

Abstract from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_(optical_phenomenon):

A halo (ἅλως; also known as a nimbus, icebow or Gloriole) is an optical phenomenon that appears near or around the Sun or Moon, and sometimes near other strong light sources such as street lights. There are many types of optical halos, but they are mostly caused by ice crystals in cold cirrus clouds located high (5–10 km, or 3–6 miles) in the upper troposphere. The particular shape and orientation of the crystals is responsible for the type of halo observed. Light is reflected and refracted by the ice crystals and may split up into colors because of dispersion, similarly to the rainbow.
Sometimes in very cold weather optical halos are formed by crystals close to ground level, called diamond dust. The crystals behave like jewels, refracting and reflecting sunlight between their faces, sending shafts of light in particular directions.




An icebow is phenomenon similar to a rainbow except that it is formed by the refraction of sunlight through cloud suspended ice crystals as opposed to raindrops or other liquid water suspended in the air. Generally the appearance is as arc sections as opposed to a full circle. Brighter sections usually occur above, below, and lateral to the center (where the sun is visible). These bright areas are referred to as "sun dogs," "parhelia" (plural), or mock suns because of their bright appearance and possible confusion with the actual location of the sun. Those icebows that are caused by very small ice crystals are one colour, because diffraction blurs the colours together.