A glory for a weather weenie

I like window seats when I fly.  I like to experience the atmosphere up close and personal, observing each cloud that we pass from a point of view that you cannot have on the ground.  Besides looking at the clouds, I like to see the ground below from a birds-eye view.  The mountains covered in snow or a city's lights lit up at night are all spectacles that are better witnessed from the air.  

Of course, the clouds are still my main reason for window seats, and on some flights I am treated to a very special optical phenomenon that can only be seen from the air.  It's called a glory and it is a rainbow ring around the shadow of an airplane when you're above a cloud of water drops.  The sunlight refracts when it hits water drops differently than it does when it hits ice crystals (which cause other types of optical phenomenon that can be seen from the ground like halos around the moon or sun).  However, the backwards refraction of sunlight around the shadow of an airplane can only be seen from above.  You have to be lucky enough to sit on the side of the plane where you can see it's shadow and then have a layer of water clouds below.  

On a recent work trip to Idaho I was sitting on the south side of the aircraft when I noticed a widespread region of low stratus clouds as we approached Boise.  I was sure that all of those passengers on the other side of the plane probably had a nice view of a glory, if they even knew to look for one, but I was on the wrong side of the plane.  However, in order to land we turned a nearly 180 degree turn such that I was able to see our shadow occasionally as we descended into the cloud deck.  Typically when I've seen glories in the past, I have been at flight altitude so our shadow on the low clouds below is rather small.  However, this time I was treated to a glory around a rather large shadow given how close we were to the clouds. At first I thought I would not get to see such a sight, given that the sun was going behind some clouds and not giving me much of a shadow.  However, right before we dipped into the clouds ourselves, the sun came out just enough for me to snap this photo.  A glory in all its glory! :)

You can see the shaded area we were about to fly into just ahead of the glory, so I am so glad I snapped this photo at just.the.right.time!