Boston Treated to Display of Rare Sunlight Phenomena

Boston had one of its most spectacular sunlight displays in years Saturday morning when weather conditions created a layer of snow crystals at a height of one or two miles, reflecting and refracting the sun's rays into a complex combination of ares, halos, and sundogs.

Charles F. Brooks, director of the Meteorological Observatory, reported that from the University station on Blue Hill the observable phenomena included parhelic, a parhelic circle, a parhelion of 120 degrees, a circumzenithal are, an upper tangent are, and also the familiar 22 degree halo about the sun.

Rarest of the observed phenomena, Dr. Brooks said, was the parhelion of 120 degrees, a round white spot in the northeast, a reflection of the sun. Dr. Brooks said he had never before seen in parhelion of 120 degrees in thirty-five years of observing.