Starship Asterisk*

Today on the way home from work, I saw a pair of sun dogs. At first I could only see the left one which was in a location where there were some wispy clouds. On the right, I could not see anything except a brightness that was more wishful thinking than sun dog. However, there were no clouds where that sun dog would be. Within 5 minutes, some wispy clouds appeared there and so did the sun dog. I assume therefore that you can't see the sun dog without the background cloud. Is this correct?

A sun dog can be seen because of the refraction of sunlight by small ice crystals making up cirrus or cirrostratus clouds. So clouds are needed to see sun dogs, but the clouds have to be of the high altitude, thin, wisplike strands/white veil -kind.

Case wrote:So clouds are needed to see sun dogs, but the clouds have to be of the high altitude, thin, wisplike strands/white veil -kind.

Thanks Case. I realize now that I had been making an unjustified assumption. Namely, because of the symmetric placement of the sun dogs, I thought the ice crystals were placed between the viewer and the sun. Now I realize that this assumption is not necessary. Nor is it true.