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Boston Treated to Display of Rare Sunlight Phenomena

Observatory Reports Unusual Snow Conditions Affect Boys

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.

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