What you’re seeing here isn’t “just” a rainbow — it’s a compound solar halo display, caused by sunlight interacting with hexagonal ice crystals suspended in high-altitude cirrostratus clouds (~6–12 km up). 🔬 What’s happening physically: • The main bright ring is the 22° halo, formed when sunlight refracts through randomly oriented hexagonal ice prisms, bending light by a minimum deviation of ~22°. • Additional faint rings can include upper/lower tangent arcs or even a 46° halo, depending on crystal orientation and path length through the ice. • The intense brightness localized to one quadrant happens because crystal alignment is not uniform — gravity, aerodynamics, and temperature gradients bias certain orientations, concentrating light in specific regions of the sky. • The subtle rainbow-like color separation comes from wavelength-dependent refraction (dispersion): shorter wavelengths (blue/violet) bend more than longer wavelengths (red). • Unlike rainbows (which require liquid drop...