Wispy sundog fragment (colors enhanced). The colors were really easy to see through my polarized sunglasses, but just faded into the glare without them. My phone barely caught it, but the info was there once I stretched the saturation.
Tag: halo
Ball of Rainbow
Sun Halo and Street Lamp
Sun halo, the day before the solar eclipse. Seems like good timing.
Spectrum at the top of the Sky
The colored wisp of cloud is too high in the sky to be a rainbow or a circumhorizon arc, and the spectrum is too ordered to be an iridescent cloud. I looked up ice halos that might produce this effect near vertical just before sunset. It turns out a circumzenithal arc is a perfect match: a rainbow arc near the zenith, brightest when the sun is very low. I’d never seen one before – it’s always cool to spot a new kind of sun halo.
Spotted November 12 at the Irvine Spectrum shopping center. It was around 90°F during the day at ground level, but of course it can be a lot colder in the upper atmosphere.
Saturation increased to show the colors more clearly.
Halo and Hawthorn
I think the tree is an Indian Hawthorn. It’s got the same leaves, bark and flowers as the bushes that are all over the place in this area, and Wikipedia says they can be pruned into trees.