Rare ‘Smiling Rainbow’ Seen Over Sussex, England

Whoever heard of an upside-down rainbow? People in Sussex, England glimpsed an extremely rare phenomenon when “freak atmospheric conditions” created a ribbon of light in the sky shaped like a smile. But what they saw technically wasn’t even a rainbow at all.

From The Daily Mail:

While normal rainbows are formed when light penetrates raindrops and emerges on the other side without changing direction, the smile is formed when sunlight shines through millions of tiny ice crystals in cirrus and cirrus stratus clouds.

Because the crystals are flat and hexagonal, they invert the light and create an upside-down curve called a circumzenithal arc.

The phenomenon relies on the sun being low in the sky, normally less than 32 degrees from the horizon.

The arcs can appear at any time of the year, hovering in the sky only fleetingly because clouds tend to move quickly near the zenith.

The Sussex ‘upside-down rainbow’ was in the sky for about five minutes, onlookers say, and then suddenly it was gone.

Another strange phenomenon in the sky was captured by scientists earlier this year – the “eye of God’ or Helix Nebula, which is actually a dying star that resembles a human eye with a blue pupil, white of the eye and a pink lid created by layers of gas

Link [The Daily Mail]

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