March 20th was a beautiful day and Sally invited me into the backyard for a juice after school while Ashlynn and Andrew played football (aka soccer.) We were chatting and enjoying the rare afternoon sunshine when Ashlynn told us to look high in the sky to see an upside down rainbow. I thought I'd misunderstood or she was imagining things, but sure enough there was an inverted rainbow. Sally and I were shocked as we’d never heard of such a thing; I joked that perhaps it was a signal to begin the alien attack. Otherwise known as a circumzenithal arc, this beautiful light show is caused by refraction of the sun through ice crystals and is rare below the Artic Circle. A normal rainbow started to form below this arc, which would have been really a sight to see, but never fully materialized. Surprisingly, a second arc showed up lower in the sky, but Sally’s camera didn’t have a wide enough lens to capture both. To finish the show, there was also a large spot (perhaps a halo or some other optical phenomenen caused by cirrus clouds and ice crystals.) Thanks Mother Nature!
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