Anyone know what these are called?

[Corryn]

Hello,
I took these on our way home from our trip last October. I'm sure you've seen them before, but what are they? They "followed" us for most of the trip!

 

[0bli0]

i'm assuming this is taken out of a plane window?? if so it's the diffraction of the window. the realy cool thing is it behaves differently based on the wavelength of the light coming through it. if you have a circular polariser, and you are flying over water (and the sun is in the right location), you can turn the polariser to get a cool rainbow coloured ocean and have white clouds.

 

[Virgo10]

I found this.

A Multi-ring glory surrounds an aircraft's shadow.

Glories are often seen from aircraft. Get a seat opposite the sun and watch them ring the aircraft's shadow - or more accurately, where your own shadow would be.

I always called these sundogs. Actually any time I saw a strange rainbow in the sky I called it a sundog. Then last summer I saw this

and found out from someone here on the DIS it was called a Fire Rainbow or a circumhorizon arc.

Here's a interesting site to learn more about some of the weird phenomena you see in the sky.

http://www.atoptics.co.uk/phen800.htm

 

[Corryn]

Oooh! Very Interesting! Yes, I took it from the plane window but what I thought was cool was that it "followed" us I'll check out that link when I return from work. Thanks! BTW, I Love that supercool photo, the one where the rainbow looks like a cloud!