Upside down rainbows and other unusual sights

[Barbara]

Thanks for clarifying that, Maria. I was assuming they were the yellow-whitish colored clouds below, which look translucent in the photo.

Neat !

[Maria]

Here is an weird picture reminiscent of Halloween.

At the bottom left quadrant, it looks like a funnel cloud is forming.

[Barbara]

Well, on the positive side, Maria, it's 4 of June --- [ birthday of St John Maximovitch - and Mother Evfrosinia, too, it looks like !
Congratulations to her ! ] ---

and you have just hit

4,444 posts !

Amazing work ! Let's hear it for our intrepid Administrator Maria, who has always interesting contributions such as these visuals of sky formations and the nice Prayer series !

[Maria]

Here is another display of noctilucent clouds.

"To confirm it was not moonlit cirrus, I examined the clouds through binoculars," says Ling. "The classic waves and bands of NLCs are just gorgeous in binoculars."

NLCs are Earth's highest clouds. Seeded by meteoroids, they float at the edge of space more than 80 km above the planet's surface. The clouds are very cold and filled with tiny ice crystals. When sunbeams hit those crystals, they glow electric-blue.

To see the complete article at spaceweather, please click
http://spaceweather.com/archive.php?vie ... &year=2015

[Maria]

Below are some noctilucent clouds from Estonia.

Summer is the season for noctilucent clouds (NLCs). They form at the edge of space, 82 km above Earth's surface, when diaphanous wisps of water vapor wrap themselves around meteoroids to form tiny ice crystals. The crystals are so tiny that they scatter blue light--hence the clouds' electric-blue color. Why summer? Ironically, that is the only time the upper atmosphere is cold enough for these icy clouds to form

http://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php ... &year=2015

And from the same website:

Here is an "upside down rainbow" that is not really a rainbow at all.

Braymen witnessed a circumhorizon arc--a rainbow-colored band of light caused by the sun shining through plate-shaped ice crystals in cirrus clouds. Summer is the season for circumhorizontal arcs because they appear only when the sun is high in the sky--more than 58o above the horizon. The arc's enormous size and pure spectral colors make it one of the most beautiful of all ice halos.

[Maria]

On a hot summer day in Glendale, during the early summer of 1982, as I was doing some shopping in preparation for my September wedding, I noticed not one, but two of these "upside down rainbows" that had crossed. With partial cloud coverage, it was visible as the Holy Cross and was featured on the afternoon TV news.

Cars were stopping, people were getting out of their cars and gawking at the sky, and of course, the horns were sounding.

[Cyprian]

There are man-made Auroras too. It would behoove us not to become overly enthralled by signs occurring in the atmosphere, since this is the abode of the demons. Our eyes may be easily deceived.