the final frontier

[spacemonkeyluvn]

Instead, what Saffas saw was what scientists call a circumzenithal arc, according to physicist Joe Jordan, a former NASA space scientist at the Ames Research Center in Mountain View, who is now director of the Sky Power Institute in Santa Cruz, which promotes solar power and other alternative fuels.

The flat, six-sided ice crystals that cause the arcs are no larger than salt grains and usually form in the cold haze of wispy cirrus clouds about 5 miles up, said Jordan, who viewed the image shot by Saffas. In the far north, zenithal arcs are more common than rainbows, but here in the Bay Area's more moderate climate they are rare, even in winter.

the article

also, shouldn't NASA be more organized than this?