When I took the dogs out for their first run on Tuesday of last week, I thought I heard an airplane going over. When I looked up, I didn’t see a plane, but I was astonished at the sight of a rainbow in the clouds overhead. The sun is out of the bottom of the frame in the image above. I can’t remember ever seeing a rainbow arc away from the sun until I saw this. Click on the image to enlarge.
I uploaded the image to SpaceWeather.com and found out that this is a circumzenithal arc:
The circumzenithal arc, CZA, is the most beautiful of all the halos. The first sighting is always a surprise, an ethereal rainbow fled from its watery origins and wrapped improbably about the zenith. It is often described as an “upside down rainbow” by first timers. Someone also charmingly likened it to “a grin in the sky”.
Look straight up near to the zenith when the sun is fairly low and especially if sundogs are visible. The center of the bow always sunwards and red is on the outside.
Fairly rare to see. I feel blessed.
Pretty neat. I’ve seen it a couple of times, but the one thing I’ll always remember was the first time I saw “The Green Flash” down at the Equator one night when the sun was setting…..
It was quite amazing to behold. Damsel was still asleep and I regret not waking her up to come see this.
I remember seeing the “green flash” several times while piloting or instructing airplanes with students or charters as the sun set over the Pacific when flying out of Santa Monica over the years. Quite a nice spectacle, indeed.
I guess if we live long enough, we’ll see a lot of spectacular things. We saw the 2012 annular eclipse of the sun in Page, AZ and the solar transit of Venus in Wickenburg less than a month later. I am looking forward to the total eclipse of the sun over Casper, Wyoming in August of 2017. We hope to be there.