by Randy Muller
I had a most amazing view yesterday (Feb 5, 1999) of some 'rings' around the sun, which I had completely forgotten about until Jay mentioned 'pearlescent pink trim'.
At lunch time (~2:30pm) I was sitting in the Carl's Junior drive-thru to pick up my standard lunch, when I happened to notice some color in the sky near the sun. I am somewhat at a loss to describe what I saw.
There were some cirro-stratus (or alto-stratus) clouds covering part of the sky and covering the sun, but they weren't very thick, and the sun was clearly seen, and shining through, casting somewhat diffuse shadows.
Partially surrounding the sun were four concentric irregular rainbows, spanning about 120 degrees of arc. The bows were NOT circular, which was the strangest aspect about them: They appeared as if they had started out circular, but then were smudged in both directions to and away from the sun. Some sections of the bows were farther from the sun than others, yet all were connected fairly smoothly.
The innermost arc was probably around 8-10 degrees away from the sun (using the fist-at-arm's-length estimating method). The furthest bow was probably about 20 degrees away from the sun, but it was closer than the standard 22 degree halo arc.
The colors were amazing: Beginning with intense yellow near the sun, it faded into orange, then red, then purple, blue, green, yellow, orange and back to red. There were four reds, progressively further away from the sun. They seemed to be approximately evenly spaced, although if there was any difference, the outermost ones would have been the thinnest and closest together.
The most intense colors were red, and greenish-blue. The least noticeable colors were blue and yellow. The red-purple transition was very dark. None of the colors were very intense -- everything had a 'pearlescent' pastel saturation. It was very dreamlike and surreal to see these unearthly, pearly rivers of color meandering around the sun.
I've seen this effect before, but only in small patches around the sun, never in meandering arcs that were actually connected, and I have never seen multiple series of them.
The effect was very temporary. After going through the drive-thru, and driving back to work, the sun and clouds were still there, but rainbows were nowhere to be seen. The clouds seemed a bit thicker and somewhat lower, but otherwise there was not much difference, and I was surprised at how particular the conditions (whatever they were) had to be to cause such an apparition.