I fly a lot for my job, sometimes several times a day, but yesterday when flying home over London I noticed something I've never seen before. I looked out of the window and noticed a strange blurry, colourful hue on the clouds in the distance. As the aircraft descended, this hue became more prominent and detailed so I decided to take some pics and also recorded a video before we descended through the clouds. You'll see during the video that a shadow of the aircraft appears inside this hue and gets closer and closer as we breach the clouds.

 

I thought I'd share:

 

https://vimeo.com/103437957

That's cool,

 

You can see the shadow of the plane in clouds but that hue must be created by a wing light or something.

 

I was thinking it was a reflection of the sun but the shadow proves that sun is on the other side of the plane.

or was it a reflection of something on the window glass That was my first thought

Could be water vapour around the plane acting like a rainbow does and separating the light into its primary colours?

This Phenomena is similar to the strange effect that the sun sometimes has on the cloud base due to high altitude pollution. It may be that the air you are flying in is causing the dusk particles to be illuminated as a shadow by the sun and obviously the clouds are mirroring that effect....well something like that, we experienced a similar effect in Florida recently.

 

its cause by the sun in the rite line of the plane causes like a silhouette on the cloud you can clearly see the shape of the plane cast on the cloud thay are very rare I watched a porg on sky last years about this its very cool

Mate that is a rainbow. We get them a lot hovering over the sea. All rainbows are round but you cant see that from the ground. Ill put a picture up.

Looks like I was sold a yarn, yes ice crystals at high level!

 

Still like the shot, not bad of my mobile!

Sorry couldn't find a great picture but this is a bigger version of the same thing.

 

Sorry couldn't find a great picture but this is a bigger version of the same thing.

 

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there sun helos there not the same as the one it show in the vid

Dan you're right its not a rainbow. I asked the Winchman, its a

 

Brocken Spectre.

 

Give it a wiki

Interesting, thanks for asking and a nice find Tom, mystery solved.