Mark- Great videos, thanks.
What's that phenomenon called, where the shadow of the plane is haloed by a rainbow? I've only seen that one other time, on a flight from SJT to DFW, my dad had passed away a couple hours before that so I went and caught the next flight home to bury my dad. It was visible for about half of that 45 minute flight. I goddamned lost it.
The sun shining through the boundary layer acts just like the sun shining through a piece of faceted crystal. The closest term for what you saw is a solar halo, also called a sunbow. The first would be most appropriate for you.
Thank you fellas. I like Solar Halo, for what it means to me. I came upon the picture I took that day and thought I'd share it. As a little boy in the early 1980s, my dad took 3 or 4 plane trips a year, for work. He'd let me shine his shoes the night before. We would drive from our suburban Dallas area house to DFW Airport, often going inside with him and watching his plane pull away from the terminal. Always waiting at the end of the jetbridge for him when he landed. That was a different time. As an adult, my job had me flying about 3 or 4 times a year, from my home about 200 miles from DFW. The daily flights from SJT only go to Dallas, so any trip I took from my home was via DFW. Occasionally he and mom would pick me up for dinner if I had a long enough layover. When he died in 2016, I lived about 4 hours away by car. 45 minute flight. I had been back and forth by car for a couple of months, we were lucky enough to have seen the end approaching, and say proper farewells. Early one Saturday afternoon, I got the call that he was slipping away. I knew the next flight to Dallas left in about 2 hours. I folded my suit and shined my shoes, and drove to the airport. On short drive, I got the call that he had passed away. I walked into the terminal as they announced my boarding group, hardly breaking stride at the gate, and we were wheels up, 30 minutes after I left the house. It's a small town, small airport. As you can imagine, I was thinking about Dad and his airplane trips, and how we'd meet him at the gate when he deplaned at DFW. And now I was going to step off that jetbridge into that terminal, but things have changed. Nobody's going to be waiting for me at the end of that jet bridge. I was disappointed in the cloud cover, I like following the highways on the ground, which I can almost always do. But as we broke through that cloud cover, I looked out to the right of the plane. We had a wingman. That Sun Dog flew in formation with us for most of the flight. This is the picture I took. Image Unavailable, Please Login