Observing the Jumping Laser Dogs

Jumping sun dogs are rapid light flashes changing over clouds, with some of them located close to the places of halo formation in thunder storms clouds. This paper presents an outline of some aspects that are required for understanding the jumping sun dogs, using some experiments with light scattering in complex fluids. In our analogy, we have observed the jumping laser dogs, in which the ice crystals are replaced by needlelike structures of ferrofluid, the electric field in the atmosphere is represented by an external magnetic field, and the laser beam scattered by the ferrofluid structure has the same role of the sun as the source of light scattered by the ice crystals subjected to changing electric fields in thunderstorm clouds.