A rainbow smile appeared in the sky of Sicily

An inverted rainbow, similar to a smile, was captured in the sky of the Sicilian resort town of Marina di Ragusa by Italian photographer Marcella Julia Pace. In the picture taken on February 24, a colorful arc crowns the top of a palm tree.

What made the rainbow smile? In fact, the observed phenomenon has a slightly different nature than an ordinary rainbow, and is called a near-zenith arc. This optical phenomenon is a kind of halo, when sunlight is refracted not by water droplets, but by ice crystals in the atmosphere.

It is noteworthy that not only the shape of the rainbow is inverted, but also the colors have the reverse order - red from below. The near-zenith arc is so called because its center coincides with the zenith, and it itself is parallel to the horizon, near which the sun shines. The distance between the sun and a rainbow smile, as a rule, is 40-45 degrees. This phenomenon is quite rare and fleeting - it disappears in a matter of minutes.