Cirrus Ice Rainbow

Caught on film the 3rd of June in northern Idaho, the above phenomenon (not technically a “rainbow”; often called a “sundog” or “parhelion”) is caused by light passing through high-altitude cirrus clouds containing plate-shaped hexagonal ice crystals facing parallel to the earth’s surface.

ARTICLE (National Geographic) IMAGE [larger version]

ARTICLE [Sundog, Parhelion] (Wikipedia) IMAGES [more examples photographed by Todd Sackmann] LINK/IMAGES [more examples, scroll to bottom of post] IMAGES [Flickr pool of atmospheric phenomena]

Previously on CN:

[LINK]([link]) [Surfing the Morning Glory]