14 DAY TRIAL // Just a few days ago, folks in Mongolia got to feast their eyes on a downright stunning and quite bizarre sight: three suns shining bright above their head, high up in the sky.
No, the guys and gals who witnessed this phenomenon did not accidentally travel through a wormhole and end up in some other universe where the Solar System has not one, but three stars at its center.
They were still here on Earth and Earth was still in its rightful place in the cosmos. The only reason why three suns appears in the sky over Mongolia earlier this month was because of an optical illusion.
How the three stars rose over Mongolia
The odd sight, filmed and photographed by pretty much everyone who chanced to have a camera close at hand when this optical illusion occurred, popped up in the sky above Mongolia last Sunday.
On that day, local temperatures were well below -22 degrees Celsius (-71.6 degrees Fahrenheit), and the air hovering over the county was saturated with ice crystals, vapors and clouds.
Scientists say that the three suns people living in this corner of the world got to see formed because of the snow covering the ground and the army of ice crystals that were then floating about in the air.
More precisely, they explain that the phenomenon, known as a parhelion, happened because, having passed through the crystals, light was reflected and ended up birthing two more suns.
When forming close to the actual sun, mock stars like the ones visible from Mongolia last weekend appear redder in color. The further they are located, they switch to being yellow, orange, maybe even blue.
Ice crystals create plenty of other impressive light displays
Earlier this month, the US National Weather Service released a photo showing so-called ice halos hovering over the town of Red River in New Mexico. These ice halos were photographed by a man named Joshua Thomas on January 9.
Like the fake suns in Mongolia, these bright circles that Joshua Thomas witnessed in the sky above Red River formed because of the presence of ice crystals in the air. These crystals deformed the light reaching them and made it take odd shapes.
