Here's a geeky piece of trivia relevant to the image you posted.
Did you know that if you count the number of diffraction rays around the sun, you can determine the number of blades in the iris diaphragm of your lens:
Usually, there are
twice as many streaks as blades. However, the streaks for parallel blades coincide. So, for a diaphragm with an odd number of blades (where no two blades are parallel) there will be twice as many radial streaks as blades, but for a diaphragm with an even number of blades (where opposite blades are parallel) the streaks overlap in pairs, giving the same number of streaks as blades (
but each streak is twice as bright).
(slightly edited from:
http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/6605/why-do-light-sources-appear-as-stars-sometimes )
T