On my way up to Glasgow on Tuesday, I stopped to take this shot of a Sun
Dog. It had started to fade by the time I found somewhere to pull over.

www.toon-army.com/sundog1.jpg

Regards

Paul

"Paul Appleby" paul@6amDOTcoDOTuk wrote in message
. ..
On my way up to Glasgow on Tuesday, I stopped to take this shot of a Sun
Dog. It had started to fade by the time I found somewhere to pull over.

www.toon-army.com/sundog1.jpg

Regards

Paul



Where does the name son dog come from? looks nothing
like a dog...

Sorry that should be SUN dog

nguk.. wrote:
"Paul Appleby" paul@6amDOTcoDOTuk wrote in message
. ..
On my way up to Glasgow on Tuesday, I stopped to take this shot of a
Sun Dog. It had started to fade by the time I found somewhere to
pull over.

www.toon-army.com/sundog1.jpg

Regards

Paul



Where does the name son dog come from? looks nothing
like a dog...


Cut and pasted from
http://www.weatherwise.org/articles/Dec02.htm

Every Dog Its Day

Mythology may explain the parhelia/sun dog origin mystery.

by Stephen R. Wilk

STEPHEN R. WILK is director of technology applications at AOtec LLC in
Southbridge, Massachusetts, and a visiting scientist at MIT. He lives in
Saugus, Massachusetts.

I thought it was a fair question. A chance Internet search had led me to
the Weatherwise Web site, where I stumbled on the Weather Query that asked
why the optical phenomena of parhelia are also called “sun dogs” and,
specifically, to whom these “dogs” may have belonged.

Posed in the March/April 2001 issue of Weatherwise by Bruce Oldfield, of
Binghamton, New York, the query stumped columnist Thomas Schlatter. After an
“interesting journey,” Schlatter and his colleagues admitted reaching a dead
end. They were able to trace the term “sun dog” only back to 1631, when
British naval captain Luke Foxe used it in his journal while on a search for
the Northwest Passage. Schlatter determined that it was

clearly not a new coinage, but as to the origin of the dogs, he came up
empty.

As a professional physicist and a writer on classical mythology, I felt I
could answer this question and expand on the origins of the sun dog name and
its relation to mythologies around the world.

Often tinged with color, sun dogs are the blobs of light that sometimes
appear to the left and right of the sun. They are produced by the refraction
of sunlight through flat, hexagonal ice crystals. Sun dogs usually appear in
pairs, but sometimes only one is visible. Sun dogs are surprisingly common
optical phenomena—far more common than rainbows in most parts of the world
and I think they are the source of many mythological stories from cultures
worldwide.

The word “parhelia” is Greek for “beside the Sun.” It’s clear to me why “sun
dogs” as a synonym is also appropriate: The two blobs of light rise as the
sun does, following it as dogs follow their master. “Parhelia” also had its
first English use at about the same time as Captain Foxe’s use of “sun dog.”
“Parhelion” was used by the Greek playwright Seneca to mean a “sun dog” back
in the first century a.d.

Who Let the Dogs In?

It’s evident that “parhelia” and “sun dogs” are parallel terms that entered
the English language from the Greek and Germanic languages, respectively,
suggesting to me that we should look to Germanic mythology to find the owner
of those dogs.

The Germanic sky god was Odin. We learn in various sources that Odin did
indeed have two “hounds.” They were actually wolves, named Geri (Ravener)
and Freki (Glutton). In all likelihood, the answer to the question, “Whose
dogs are the sun dogs?” is thus the German sky god Odin.

Odin is also said to have had two ravens named Huginn (Thought) and Munin
(Memory), who flew around the world and brought back information. I suspect
that we have here a parallel tradition: To some people the sun dogs were his
fast, far-ranging wolves; to others they were his intelligence/service
ravens. Both traditions have been retained.

In my opinion, sun dogs are the logical source of the stories in mythologies
around the world about sons of the sun god/sky god. They look like
miniature, weaker versions of the sun. They appear in pairs (when there are
ice crystals throughout the sky). They keep pace with the sun. They are
sometimes seen as horsemen because they race rapidly across the sky, like
the sun itself.

In Greek mythology, the “Dioskouri” were the sons of Zeus, the god of the
sky. The Spartan Dioskouri were even said to be able to fly. Their sunlike
appearance explains why on coins each of the Dioskouri has a single star on
his head.

The word “Dioskouri” literally means “sons of God.” That there were actually
two sets of twin sons of the sky god in Greek mythology suggests that the
fact that they were twin sons was probably more important than their names
or other features about them.

Hit or Myth

This becomes more significant when we note that mythologies around the world
feature twin sons of the sky (or sun) god. Besides Greece, there are sun
twins in ancient Babylon, China, and India. Sun twins are also a part of
common myths among Native Americans of the Southwest, including the Zuni,
Hopi, and Apache. They appear among the Seneca in New York State and among
the Maya in Central America.

The myth also appears in southeastern Africa. When a woman there has twin
sons, they are called “children of the sky.” In old Scandinavian carvings,
twin figures appear to be associated with the sun. No myths survive that
tell of these figures.

Why are there so many of these heavenly twins? And what do they signify?
Some scholars have suggested that the ancients believed the sky was divided
into two halves—a dark and a light. There is also the double personification
of the planet Venus as the morning star and the evening star.

It seems strange that so many cultures from around the world have come up
with the same image of heavenly twins if it involved abstract notions such
as twin hemispheres of the sky or even personifying Venus as two entities
instead of one. Thus, I suggest that it is more likely that sun dogs are at
the root of the heavenly twins images. Sun dogs would have been a more
immediate phenomenon that directly inspired the idea of the sons of god,
without the philosophical intermediaries.

Yet Another Interpretation

Finally, I’d like to suggest yet another mythological interpretation of the
sun dog. Very often, there will only be ice crystals in the sky on one side
of the sun. In that case the sun only has one “son,” which brings to mind
the Greek myth of Phaethon. Phaethon was the son of Klymene and an unnamed,
absent father. When the other boys teased him about this, his mother told
him that his father was Helios, the sun. (In later versions his father is
Apollo, who became identified with the sun.)

Phaethon made the long pilgrimage to the House of the Sun in the far east,
where the god told him that he was, indeed, his child and promised to grant
him anything he wanted as proof. Phaethon asked to drive the chariot of the
sun. Helios tried to dissuade him from this disastrous choice, but Phaethon
insisted, and Helios’s word was his bond. The next morning, he put the reins
into Phaethon’s hands and set off on horseback near him for the journey
across the sky. Phaethon started out well but later was unable to control
the chariot. The sun went off course, dipping low to scorch the Sahara into
a desert and drive the Egyptians into the Nile, according to the legend. To
prevent the world from being destroyed, Zeus threw a thunderbolt that
unseated Phaethon, who fell to his death in the river Eridanus. Helios took
over the reins of the chariot, and the sun resumed its course.

There have been various attempts to explain the myth in terms of
mythological types (Phaethon imitates the sun in his chariot as Salmoneus
imitates Zeus, say some, and both are inspired by pageants in which the king
assumes the role of a god in the chariot) or in terms of natural phenomena
(several have suggested that the myth was inspired by a meteorite). But it
seems to me far more likely that the one-sided sun dog may have inspired the
myth.

Another argument favors this explanation over a meteor strike. A meteor is a
one-time-only occurrence. I know of no myths that can be reliably attributed
to such a single event. People have proposed cases such as the sinking of
Atlantis (inspired, it is said, by the explosion of Thera/Santorni), the
Great Deluge of various mythologies (due to some great flooding of the
Tigris/Euphrates River valley), or the catastrophic inundation of the Black
Sea, but none of these cases is anything but speculation. Real myths tend to
be associated with repeated events that have many occasions to implant their
images in the consciousness of the storytellers.

Sun dogs fit this description. In fact, as stated before, sun dogs are even
more common than rainbows in most parts of the world, and their appearance
in the ancient skies likely provided storytellers with ample opportunities
to spin their fantastic tales.



--
http://www.stuffmongers.com

"Homo sapiens, the first truly free species, is about to decommission
natural selection, the force that made us.... Soon we must look deep
within ourselves and decide what we wish to become." Edward O. Wilson
Consilience, The Unity of Knowledge

Remove frontal lobes to reply from a NG

On Fri, 7 May 2004 07:11:32 +0000 (UTC), "nguk.." wrote:


Sorry that should be SUN dog


These spell chequers can bee a bitch sum times, wye cant they fined awl the miss
spelled words?

JPG

These spell chequers can bee a bitch sum times, wye cant they fined awl the
miss
spelled words?

JPG


The following poem is not original like yours above: apologies to those hoo have
scene it be four.

Eye have a spelling checker.
It came with my pea sea.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea.

Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your sure reel glad two no.
Its vary polished in it's weigh.
My checker tolled me sew.

A checker is a bless sing,
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right awl stiles two reed,
And aides me when I rime.

Each frays come posed up on my screen
eye trussed too bee a joule.
The checker pours o'er every word
To cheque sum spelling rule.

Bee fore a veiling checker's Hour
spelling mite decline,
And if we're lacks oar have a laps,
We wood bee maid too wine.

Butt now bee cause my spelling
Is checked with such grate flair,
Their are no fault's with in my cite,
Of nun eye am a ware.

Now spelling does knot phase me,
It does knot bring a tier.
My pay purrs awl due glad den
With wrapped word's fare as hear.

To rite with care is quite a feet
Of witch won should be proud,
And wee mussed dew the best wee can,
Sew flaw's are knot aloud.

Sow ewe can sea why aye dew prays,
Such soft wear four pea seas,
And why eye brake in two averse
Buy righting too pleas.

-- Sauce Unknown

Anne

"Anne Burgess" wrote here on 07 May
2004:

snip
Sow ewe can sea why aye dew prays,
^^^

snip

You need a different accent from mine to make that one work!


--
Above address *is* valid - but snip spamtrap to get me to *read*!

Support the world's oldest motorsport venue!
http://www.shelsley-walsh.co.uk/future.html

In message , Les & Claire
writes
Cut and pasted from
http://www.weatherwise.org/articles/Dec02.htm

Every Dog Its Day


I have always assumed it was a recent name and referred to the
similarity with the pot dogs people always used to have either side of
the mantelpiece, or the fireplace, i.e. objects either side of a hot
bright thing. Oh well.....
--
Anita Evans
North Cumbria
(anita[at]ra.evans.clara.co.uk to reply by e-mail)

You need a different accent from mine to make that one work!

And mine - I still haven't worked it out.

Anne

"Anita Evans" wrote in message


I have always assumed it was a recent name and referred to the
similarity with the pot dogs people always used to have either side of
the mantelpiece, or the fireplace, i.e. objects either side of a hot
bright thing. Oh well.....

Why should that theory be excluded? A favourite place for pets and a
weatherlore in themselves, the habits of cats and dogs were often taken
as
precursors.

Interesting that the article pointed to the behaviour of the weather in
latitudes near 30 degrees, we get torrential rain up here nearer the
60th
parallel when we see noon sundogs or is that sungods?

I don't know what the morning sightings forecast. What happenend next?
Anyone know?


--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG