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An Astral Vista

Wednesday June 13, 2007 8:28 PM, Aleem Faizee

Malegaonians went frenzy on Saturday June 9 after watching a beautiful ring around the sun. Ummid.com does a discovery as to what exactly the magic ring was.

People from Nashik, Dhule and Chalisgaon joined the Malegaonians to witness the rarest of the rare phenomenon on Saturday June 9. It was a beautiful never seen before perfect colourful ring around the sun. Started at around 11:30 in the morning and continued till 02:30 in the afternoon, the incident brought Malegaonians, elders and children alike, out on the roads so as to experience a “miracle” and enjoy the solar vista.

People were not sure if it was a rainbow or something like this. But the mid-sky rainbow worked as a treat for them. “How can it be a rainbow? There is no rain since last many days”, said Ather Shazan. What is it then? “We just don't know. Whatever it may be, just look at the beauty”, said Ather’s brother Zohair pointing high towards the sky.

The two brothers were not the exception, most of the onlookers we spoke were not sure what exactly was it, but they were unanimous about the beauty of the event. “Fantastic!” exclaimed Ateka Tarannum, a teacher who brought all of her students on the ground to have a glimpse of the phenomenal ring. “Bahut Sundar”, said Kokilaben, the sweeper in the school. The beauty of the phenomenon apart, nobody was ready to discuss what exactly it was.

Puzzled, we contacted the local Metrological Department only to find them totally unaware of the “miracle”. Even contacting their Kolaba Office in Mumbai didn’t yield any result. In pursuit of a solution we contacted the Nehru Planetarium in Mumbai. “It is not a rainbow because the rainbows are always formed on the opposite side of the sun. This is a Sundog”, said Piyush Pande, Director of the Planetarium in an exclusive telecon with Nashik Times. “I saw it in Mumbai on June 6 at 08:15 in the morning and even took the photographs”, continued a beaming Piyush Pande.

However when we compared the photograph sent by Nehru Centre with the one taken in Malegaon, we found lot of difference between the two. Mystified, we traced Dr. Yusuf Ansari, a scholar and showed the photographs to him. He said, “The Mumbai Sundog was the result of the rain but what we experienced in Malegaon was not a Sundog, it was a “Halo”, a phenomenon commonly seen around the moon”. But a halo around the sun, that too moving towards west along with the sun, was surprising even for Dr. Yusuf.

Be it a Rainbow, Sundog or a Halo, people seemed least concerned about it. As Shrikant Jadhav, a resident of Rane Nagar, Nashik put it, “It was just indescribable. I had seen rainbows many times but yeh to kuch alag hi tha.” Nashik Times

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