LETTER: Beautiful display in evening sky
I wonder if any of your other readers noticed the beautiful circumzenithal arc high in the sky early on the evening of Wednesday, June 25.
This fairly rare ‘upside-down’ rainbow is caused by a refraction of sunlight through horizontally-oriented ice crystals, generally in cirrus clouds. It forms a quarter of a circle centred on the zenith and on the same side as the sun.
Cirrus clouds which cause a ‘sun dog’ can cause a circumzenithal arc when they reach the zenith, if the sun is low in the sky.
V.M. Lloyd (Mrs)
Ash Road, Southwater