iestyn.net » circumzenithal arc http://www.iestyn.net/wp "the concrete world is starting to get ya." Fri, 21 Oct 2011 16:27:14 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Strange weather phenomenon http://www.iestyn.net/wp/2009/03/01/strange-weather-phenomenon http://www.iestyn.net/wp/2009/03/01/strange-weather-phenomenon#comments Sun, 01 Mar 2009 19:42:22 +0000 Iestyn http://www.iestyn.net/wp/2009/03/01/strange-weather-phenomenon Strange weather phenomenon part 3/3

My parents took this photo today. Does anyone know what it is?

It looks like a Circumzenithal arc, but it’s got another rainbow.

Could it be a Kern arc? Those have only been seen 6 times.

More info on Flickr!

Update
Les from Atmospheric Optics tell me that the top half is a circumzenithal arc, and the bottom half is a "rare supralateral arc made by hexagonal column crystals"

Apparently seeing this is quite rare: "the combination of the two would be once a year or less"

Thanks again to Les for clearing this up :)

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