Cyclist baffled by ‘magical two suns’ appearing in sky over China
Pink Floyd might have to rename his 1983 classic Two Suns in the Sunset after ‘two suns’ were spotted in China during the sunrise.
The footage, taken by local photographer Chen Ke, captured the moment two ‘suns’ rose above Chengdu, the capital of the southwestern Sichuan province, on July 18.
Uploading the footage on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, Chen said he craned his neck up high to see the pair of suns at about 7:10am.
He told his more than 420,00 followers that he was cycling to work in a scene straight out of a science fiction film.
Filmed just near Jinzhou Road Station in the urban Jinniu District, the video shows two perfectly round suns – one slightly smaller – overlooking the provincial capital.
One Weibo user joked: ‘No wonder it’s been so hot.’
Another commented: ‘It’s about to explode.’
A TikTok user, or Douyin as it’s known in China, claimed they saw the bizarre celestial phenomenon too. ‘How could there be two suns?’ the user Xiao Yi says in the video.
Chen said some social media users thought it was just glass reflecting the light or edited the footage with some special effects.
‘I can’t afford to do that,’ he said, ‘I just took a random shot and recorded it.’
Some users had suggested it could be a sun dog, also called a parhelion or mock sun. The atmospheric phenomenon only happens when there are enough frozen ice crystals in the air that it shakes apart the light, causing a rainbow halo to form around the sun.
This also isn’t the first time a double sun image has been taken in China, and astronomers suspect they could be seriously rare mirages – where rays of light are bent and twisted by the atmosphere.
Zeng Yang, vice president of the Sichuan Astronomical Science Popularization Association, debunked the idea that there was a ghostly ‘phantom sun’ looming over the city.
He told Hong Kong-based news website hk01 that with only a few clouds in the sky or cold water vapour, it’s pretty unlikely what Chen saw was a sun dog.
‘It did not meet the conditions,’ he said.
In the footage, as some users pointed out, the so-called ‘second sun’ can be seen in front of the electrical wires arching across the road as Chen biked closer.
But Zeng said it could be glare from nearby windows or other reflective surfaces and Chen’s iPhone 14’s camera lenses splitting the sunlight in two when filmed.
A Weibo aid they saw the doubled-up suns but chalked it up to the double-glazed windows. ‘My dad saw it at first,’ the user said, ‘and told me to hurry up to see two suns.’
‘I told him it was because… there are two layers of glass,’ the user said, ‘nobody paid attention.’
Regardless of what it was, Chen said it felt ‘magical’ to see.
‘I just recorded it casually,’ he added on Weibo, ‘and hope that good things will come in pairs this month.’
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