Solar halos and sun dogs

The author discusses the beautiful displays of light in the air around us, particularly the elegant mechanisms that bring about the striking atmospheric effects associated with solar halos. Although people have been drawing and hypothesizing about solar halos and sun dogs for many years, the pioneer who developed a solid quantitative demonstration of their origins is Robert Greenler. The author considers the essence of Greenler´s (1980) elegant approach. He shows how to generalize it to include full-color simulations, which involves bringing in some tools more familiar to computer graphicists