Two
Suns Spotted In China Defy Explanation
Weeks after a story shot across the Web claiming that
the imminent explosion of a nearby star would result
in the appearance of a second sun in the sky — a
story that was later debunked — two suns were caught
on camera yesterday in China. The suns — one fuzzy
and orange, the other a crisp yellow orb — appeared
side-by-side, one slightly higher than the other.
What's going on? Life's Little Mysteries, a sister
site to Space.com, asked Jim Kaler, the University of
Illinois astronomer who squelched the excitement over
the aforementioned exploding Betelgeuse and who has
written books on the day and night sky. The double sun
image is an effect of optical refraction, Kaler said,
but it's a "pretty darn rare" one, and one
not fully explained by science.