A beautiful so-called fire rainbow could be observed and filmed in southwestern China on Monday evening. The breathtaking images (see video above) show a colorful pair of clouds that resemble a huge golden bowl or even a bit of a UFO.
The atmospheric phenomenon, which looks a bit like a horizontal rain floor, is a so-called circumhorizontal arc (also called fire rainbow, ed.) – a colorful halo phenomenon. The movie was filmed in Xishuangbanna in Yunnan Province, southwestern China.
At first glance, the video appears to show an ordinary dusk over the city. But as the cameraman zooms in, he sees the stunning pair of colorful clouds that seem to appear like a UFO behind the dark clouds.
A fire rainbow is created by hexagonal ice crystals floating in cirrus or cirrostratos clouds when aligned horizontally. The light enters a vertical side surface and exits the bottom horizontal surface. Under optimal conditions, the entire cloud can be colored like a rainbow.
The effect is caused by refraction of light
The so-called fire rainbow is not – as the name suggests – created by water droplets like a normal rainbow, but by ice crystals. These act like a prism and break down the sun’s rays into their colors: from red to yellow to green and blue.
A circumhorizontal arc can only occur when the sun is higher than 57.8 degrees above the horizon. Therefore, this natural phenomenon cannot be observed in places further north than 55 degrees north latitude or southerly than 55 degrees south latitude.
Source: Krone
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