Starship Asterisk*

AnudderGuest wrote:Couldn't it be a normal rainbow except parts of the bow are being "prevented" by the shadows of higher clouds causing the anticrepuscular rays? Perhaps this is what the first poster was saying also. Regardless, I just think it's pretty :-)

Chris Peterson wrote:

neufer wrote:

http://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/cha2.htm wrote:<<Look for the brightly coloured circumhorizon arc (also a circumhorizontal arc but never 'fire rainbow') when the sun is very high in the sky - higher than 58°. Near to noon in mid summer is a good time in middle latitudes. The halo is beneath the sun and twice as far from it (two hand spans) as the 22º halo.

The Sun never exceeds an altitude of 48° in North Pole, Alaska, and was only at 25° when this image was made.

neufer wrote:

http://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/cha2.htm wrote:<<Look for the brightly coloured circumhorizon arc (also a circumhorizontal arc but never 'fire rainbow') when the sun is very high in the sky - higher than 58°. Near to noon in mid summer is a good time in middle latitudes. The halo is beneath the sun and twice as far from it (two hand spans) as the 22º halo.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/06/060619-rainbow-fire.html wrote:

June 19, 2006—It looks like a rainbow that's been set on fire, but this phenomenon is as cold as ice.

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<<Known in the weather world as a circumhorizontal arc, this rare sight was caught on film on June 3 as it hung over northern Idaho near the Washington State border.

The arc isn't a rainbow in the traditional sense—it is caused by light passing through wispy, high-altitude cirrus clouds. The sight occurs only when the sun is very high in the sky (more than 58° above the horizon). What's more, the hexagonal ice crystals that make up cirrus clouds must be shaped like thick plates with their faces parallel to the ground.

When light enters through a vertical side face of such an ice crystal and leaves from the bottom face, it refracts, or bends, in the same way that light passes through a prism. If a cirrus's crystals are aligned just right, the whole cloud lights up in a spectrum of colors.

This particular arc spanned several hundred square miles of sky and lasted for about an hour, according to the London Daily Mail.>>

http://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/cha2.htm wrote:
<<Look for the brightly coloured circumhorizon arc (also a circumhorizontal arc but never 'fire rainbow') when the sun is very high in the sky - higher than 58°. Near to noon in mid summer is a good time in middle latitudes. The halo is beneath the sun and twice as far from it (two hand spans) as the 22º halo.

It is a very large halo and always parallel to the horizon. Often only fragments are visible where there happen to be cirrus clouds - the individual patches of cirrus are then lit with colour that can be mistaken for iridescence.

High sun infralateral arcs occupy a similar position in the sky. The infralateral arc curves upwards from the horizon slightly and this is best checked for visually because lens distortions invariably also show the circumhorizon arc as curved.

The rarity, or otherwise, of the arc depends on where you are. At medium latitudes like much of the USA it is not rare - it can be seen several times each summer. In contrast, further north in much of Europe the circumhorizon arc is a rarity and impossible to see north of Copenhagen. See the charts in 'How rare?' for the visibility at your location.>>

I was in North Pole Alaska (near Fairbanks) on July 5, 2011 and saw this unusual rainbow. It was wavy and had spaces of no color between large sections. I wondered what caused this phenomena?

I saw the rainbow with my eyes, it was so unusual that made me decide to take the pictures.

This was about 7 PM on July 5th. There was no rain. It was a very warm day. The Sun was at my back (yet still overhead as we were so far north, I think they said we were 500 miles south of the north pole). We were facing southeast, I believe. The portions of the rainbow were apart when we first looked, then came together.