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Sunday's Sun

Posted: Tue May 12, 2009 7:56 pm
by benay626
On May 10, 2009, My family and I saw a rainbow completely surrounding the sun. This was the first time that we saw something like this.You could only see the rainbow with sunglasses on, without them there was a white cloud-like mass surrounding the sun. I was wondering if anyone else witnessed this phenomenon.

Re: Sunday's Sun

Posted: Tue May 12, 2009 8:59 pm
by makc
like this?

Re: Sunday's Sun

Posted: Tue May 12, 2009 9:30 pm
by neufer
benay626 wrote:On May 10, 2009, My family and I saw a rainbow completely surrounding the sun. This was the first time that we saw something like this.You could only see the rainbow with sunglasses on, without them there was a white cloud-like mass surrounding the sun. I was wondering if anyone else witnessed this phenomenon.
Rainbows surround the anti-solar point.

You most likely saw a cirrus ice halo:

http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/not ... /halo.html
http://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/common.htm
http://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/circular.htm
http://www.atoptics.co.uk/halosim.htm
http://fiveprime.org/hivemind/Tags/cirrus,halo