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Who let the sun and moon dogs out in MN?

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Updated: 11 months ago

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The full moon Tuesday night and colder temperatures brought out a rare phenomenon early Wednesday morning.

Moon dogs were visible early Wednesday morning before the sun came out. 

A moon dog is a relatively rare bright circular spot on a lunar halo caused by the refraction of moonlight by hexagonal-plate-shaped ice crystals in cirrus or cirrostratus clouds.

But when the sun came up, the sun dogs also appeared. 

Sun dogs are rings around the sun, and typically form just after sunrise on windy, bitterly cold mornings after snow falls.

A sun dog is caused by water vapor that freezes into ice crystals. The sunlight is then refracted by the ice crystals, forming bright rings on either side of the visible sun.

Those rings are supposed to resemble the tails of dogs; hence the name.

Sun dogs usually happen when the temperature is below zero, and the wind is stronger than 10 miles an hour.

 

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