“Never look into the Sun!!” Something we are all taught, I guess. And it does make sense, as the bright direct sunlight can cause damage to the retina. However, sometimes there are good reasons to look into the direction of our closest star. Especially when you block the sun itself, you might see a whole range of phenomena around the sun.

The most common is a halo, a circle around the Sun. Sometimes you can also find sundogs, two brighter, often rainbow-coloured, spots on either side of the sun. Even more rare are the parhelic circle and upper tangent arc. You can imagine we were quite excited to see all of these phenomena together during our stay on the Boschplaat on Terschelling.