PARHELIA, OR MOCK SUNS.
On the fifth of February, 1674, near Marienberg, in Prussia, the sky being everywhere serene, the sun, which was still some degrees above the horizon, was seen to lance out very long and reddish rays, forty or fifty degrees toward the zenith, notwithstanding it shone with great luster. Beneath this planet, toward the horizon, there hung a somewhat thin small cloud, at the inferior part of which there appeared a mock sun, of the same apparent size with the true sun, and of a reddish color. Soon after, the true sun descending gradually to the horizon, toward the said cloud, the spurious sun beneath it grew clearer and clearer, in so much that the reddish color in this apparent solar disk vanished, and it put on the genuine solar light, in proportion as it was approached by the genuine disk of the sun. The latter, at length, passed into the lower counterfeit sun, and thus remained alone. This phenomenon was considered the more wonderful, as it was perpendicularly under the sun, instead of being at its side, as parhelia usually are; not to mention the color, so different from that which is usual in mock suns, nor the great length of the tail cast up by the genuine sun, of a far more vivid and splendid light than parhelia commonly exhibit. This appearance was soon followed by an exceedingly intense frost, which lasted till the twenty-fifth of March, the whole bay being frozen up from the town of Dantzic to Hela in the Baltic sea.
On the twenty-eighth of August, 1698, about eight o’clock in the morning, there was seen at Sudbury, in Suffolk, England, the appearance of three suns, which were then extremely brilliant. Beneath a dark, watery cloud, in the east, nearly at its center, the true sun shone with such strong beams, that the spectators could not look at it; and on each side were the reflections. Much of the firmament was elsewhere of an azure color. The circles were not colored like the rainbow, but white; and there was also, at the same time, higher in the firmament, and toward the south, at a considerable distance from the other phenomena, the form of a half-moon, but apparently of double the size, with the horns turned upward. This appearance was, within, of a fiery red color, imitating that of the rainbow. These phenomena faded gradually, after having continued about two hours.
Two mock suns, an arc of a rainbow inverted, and a halo, were seen at Lyndon, in the county of Rutland, on the twenty-second of October, 1621, at eleven in the morning. There had been an aurora borealis the preceding night, with the wind at west-south-west. The two parhelia, or mock suns, were bright and distinct, and in the usual places, namely, in the two intersections of a strong and large portion of a halo, with an imaginary circle parallel to the horizon, passing through the true sun. Each parhelion had its tail of a white color, and in direct opposition to the true sun; that toward the east being some twenty or twenty-five degrees long, and that toward the west from ten to twelve degrees, both narrowest at the remote ends. The mock suns were evidently red toward the sun, but pale or whitish at the opposite sides, as was the halo also. Still higher in the heavens, was an arc of a curiously inverted rainbow, about the middle of the distance between the top of the halo and the vertex. This arc was as distinct in its colors as the common rainbow, and of the same breadth. The red color was on the convex, and the blue on the concave of the arc, which seemed to be about ninety degrees in length, its center being in or near the vertex. On the top of the halo was a kind of inverted bright arc. This phenomenon was seen on the following day, and, again, on the twenty-sixth. On the eleventh of the preceding month, September, a very splendid and remarkable aurora borealis, presenting truly unaccountable motions and removals, was witnessed in Rutlandshire, in Northamptonshire, and at Bath.