Bird ID and Sun Dogs.

So that bird I thought was a pheasant might actually have been a grouse.  I spotted it again in the same general spot (near my garden patch), and when it was flying, it had a crest on its head like a grouse.  So I'm not sure what it is.  The tail feathers seem long for a grouse, but what do I know?  Anyone got a positive ID?

Grouse or Pheasant?

Do you know what I am?

Been having a bit of a cold snap the past couple days here.  Got into the negative teens last night and I don't think it's above zero yet out there (at 11am).  I was up early enough to watch the sun rise (which isn't very early this time of year!) and witnessed an interesting phenomenon.  I've seen this before, but never been able to photograph it.

Sun Dogs.

That's the sun rising in the middle, and the interesting thing are the two bright spots on either side of it.  These are caused by ice crystals in the air refracting the light sort of like a rainbow.  Haven't really wrapped my head around the optics of it, but that's what I remember reading somewhere.  These "sun dogs" also have lots of other names: parahelia, sun halo, halo, etc.  I remember reading that the "sun dogs" are supposed to be about 22 degrees from the sun, so out of curiosity, I got out mom & dad's old sextant and measured the angle...

Tricky trying to take a photo through the sextant, while trying to keep it lined up...

Granted, this sextant is a bit old and the sight is a bit out of whack.  Also, I was measuring a very bright blurry spot in the sky, not a fine point of light like a star, but I came up with about 23.5 degrees.

Davis Mark 3 sextant.  Still know how to use it, sorta.

So I thought that was pretty nifty.  As the sun got higher, the halo got more pronounced.

Pretty cool eh?

Once it got higher than this, it started to disappear.  Also, the above picture was a super short exposure with a high f-stop.  The sun was bright enough by then I couldn't look anywhere near it, but the halo was still there even if I couldn't see it.  Cool stuff.