Clear picture of rainbow clouds

What does this mean?

I was browsing reddit and came across this picture. I think I read here on ATS somewhere that means HARP is involved.

Just curious on some members opinions I have personally never seen anything like this ever in my life.

It is top right

i.imgur.com...

Wow they are beautiful, unfortunately there is nothing there. But, I see these quite often in my area in PA.

That's pretty cool looking. Almost like oil & water in the sky.

Does BP do aerial drilling now?

Interesting sun dog though. I see them all the time where I live. Not quite so "fluid" looking but still similar.

reply to post by logicalthinking


sorry check it out now I hit enter when i meant to hit TAB

It means ICE Crystals. Light being scattered IE: A Rainbow

ROY G BIV

The green and purple colors to me suggests its polarized light.
might be the filtering built into the lens and the scattering/refracting of the clouds causing the light to polarize.

Wow that one is bad ass. I haven't seen one that bright. Found this explanation of them "It's due to those high, wispy clouds that are around today. Those clouds are made of tiny ice crystals, and if the cloud is at the right angle to the sun, the crystals will refract the sunlight (much like a prism) into the colors of the rainbow." source

reply to post by logicalthinking


well that helps thank you. Just never seen it before so I really was not sure.

reply to post by Crumbles


Beautiful pic! Some people think they are related to earthquakes, but I have seen them before, and never experienced an earthquake....so it is probably just coincidence.

It's called an "iridescent cloud." I see this all the time. Check out this site, it describes a bunch of atmospheric phenomenon: www.atoptics.co.uk...

Here are some I took from my yard last year, hope I do the links right...

Its called Iridescence, it has nothing to do with HAARP like most weather phenomenen people dont understand.

Its caused when ice crystals or water droplets of the same size diffract sunlight as the cloud is evolving. Its more common that people actually realise.

www.atoptics.co.uk...

Originally posted by logicalthinking
Wow that one is bad ass. I haven't seen one that bright. Found this explanation of them "It's due to those high, wispy clouds that are around today. Those clouds are made of tiny ice crystals, and if the cloud is at the right angle to the sun, the crystals will refract the sunlight (much like a prism) into the colors of the rainbow." source

The "rainbow cloud" phenomena being talked about and certainly shown in the photographs on that website shouldn't be confused with cloud iridescence which is what we are seeing in the OP's photograph.

The photographs in the website above are all of arcs such as the circumhorizon arc, and possibly some slightly less common arcs. There's even one shot there that looks a little like a sundog (parhelia), but it's hard to tell since the shot is so tightly cropped.

Cloud iridescence is actually very common, but large swathes of bright iridescence like that shown in the photograph the OP posted are less frequently seen. Generally iridescence can be see in the fringes of cloud, when the sun goes behind a cloud of the right type, but the colors are usually subtle. On rare occasions where the ice crystals that make up a cloud are very uniform in size/shape/orientation, the colors and patterns become much more intense.