Very unusual 'Circular Sun Rainbow'

[cheshiremusicman]

I was playing golf at the 'Pine Beach' course on Monday and as we were approaching the seashore on the 15th hole I noticed a few 'small rainbow clouds', some of which I have seen before in the UK on a couple of occasions. I pointed these out to my playing companions and non of them had ever seen these before; neither it seems had the caddies who were all chattering away to each other about them.

I got my camera out and unfortunately I'd been in the process of changing the memory card and installing a freshly charged battery and the dam_n thing wouldn't work, or so I thought? I eventually realised a few minutes later (when my polaroid sunglasses slipped off) that the camera was working but was asking me if I wanted to reset the time and date; a display that I'd missed because of the strong light and the effect of the polaroid glasses blocking out the LCD display. OK sorry about the long explanation; but by now when I looked up there was the most amazing sight; a HUGE (and I mean HUGE) dark black circle with the sun in the center and a complete 360 degree rainbow around it. Well if you'd have seen the look on every-bodies face when I again told them to look up; it would have made a picture in itself. The pictures were shot at wide angle on my Nikon P7000 which is about 28mm equivalent on 35mm camera and the photographs are the full images not cropped so you can glean just how BIG it looked in the sky overhead. The effect lasted about 5 minutes before WE lost sight of it - supposedly the angle of viewing would effect how long it was visible from the same point on the ground?

I believe that this is caused by the refraction of the sunlight by very high altitude ice crystals, but I have never seen anything like this before in my life and I'm 70 years old. I think that the effect is described as a 'Renticular Rainbow', but I'm not sure!.

Did anybody else witness this amazing sight or have any information regarding how it is formed?.

I'm sure that we have some very knowledgeable meteorologists amongst the forums who could enlighten us on this phenomena.

[ktm jeff]

Fantastic photos - thanks for sharing.

[Goshawk]

it's an optical phenomenon known as a 22° halo

i saw & captured one (only the 2nd i've ever seen) a few months ago... here's the thread i started on it.

[NCC1701A]

also known as a "sun dog"

[cheshiremusicman]

Thanks 'Goshawk' and 'NC1701A'

I've just been reading about this on www.atoptics.co.uk a really fantastic website with a tremendous amount of info, well worth a look and some spectacular photographs - far better than mine. Apparently the ice crystals are at a height of about 3 to 5 miles above the surface of the earth and it always produces the 22degree angle.

I just wish that I had had the foresight to use my hand as a 'light shield ' to block out the sun in the centre of the image. It would have made the circle a lot clearer without the inevitable flare from the optics in the camera, but all hindsight is 20 20 as they say.

Just feel privileged to have seen this rare phenomena.

I do remember years ago, seeing a similar effect around the moon when I lived in the UK, but unfortunately I didn't manage to photograph that.

[skills32]

That fitst photo looks like someone is eyeballing you. God or Budda perhaps?

[jmccarty]

Nibiru on the way!

Cool photo!