On the EarthSky blog today the authors posted a short video of a spacecraft destroying a sundog. You’ve probably seen sundogs or parhelia before–they are optical phenenoma caused by sunlight refracting through ice crystals which show up as spots of light to the left or right of the sun, usually near sunrise or sunset. Often they are rainbow-colored because light waves of different colors travel through the ice crystals at different speeds, resulting in bands of color. This spacecraft launch, which occurred back in 2010, created a shock wave around it that disrupted the sundog as it passed near the ice crystal clouds. You can view the video and read more about it at https://earthsky.org/human-world/video-when-a-spacecraft-destroyed-a-sundog.
You can learn more about atmospheric optics and see more great pictures at https://www.atoptics.co.uk/.
