Beverley Summers (Cloud Appreciation Society Member 63,896) spotted this combination of cloud and colour over Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, England. A rainbow appears to span the sweeping cloud strands, known as Cirrus uncinus homomutatus. But this is no rainbow. It’s a circumzenithal arc, an optical phenomenon produced as sunlight shines through ice crystals in the shape of hexagonal plates with their large faces orientated horizontally. Like a primary rainbow, the colours range from red on the outer edge to violet on the inner edge, but the circumzenithal arc appears the other way up in the sky. It curves upwards rather than down, like a smile in the sky courtesy of ice and light.
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