photo #8102158

Keith Williamson (Member 22,068) was on the flight deck of an Airbus A330 coming in to land at Brisbane Airport, Queensland, Australia when this psychedelic shadow appeared in the clouds ahead. No evasive manoeuvres were necessary, nor any subsequent tests for hallucinations. This was just the optical phenomenon known as a glory.It is caused by the reflection, refraction, and diffraction of sunlight through water droplets as the Sun shines from directly behind you onto a cloud – in this case, a layer of Stratocumulus. The slight offset of the rings, which are always centred on the position in the shadow of the viewer, shows this photograph was taken from the right-hand seat. Since the pilot in command of a commercial aircraft conventionally sits on the left not the right, we can reassure passengers that their hands would have been firmly on the controls throughout.