© Del ZaneWhat in the world? A bright display in the clouds.
A colorful apparition materialized over Washington this week; the rarely glimpsed, rainbow-tinted specter appeared and vanished in the space of just minutes.
Fortunately for anyone who didn't look up at precisely the right moment, an enterprising resident of Anacortes, a small town about 80 miles (128 kilometers) north of Seattle, captured the
mysterious light show on film."My wife said, 'Wow, look at that! Too bad you don't have your camera,'" said Del Zane, a retired software executive and photographer.
The couple was in the car after a morning bike ride and lunch - and just a half-mile from home. "So I just gunned it," Zane said.
A few minutes and a mad dash later, Zane had his camera in hand, pointed it skyward and started snapping pictures.
"It was very colorful and striking, and in just a small portion of the sky," Zane told OurAmazingPlanet. "I hadn't seen anything like it, that's for darn sure."
The colorful phenomenon, known officially as a circumhorizon arc, occurs when sunlight strikes
cirrus clouds - the kind that typically look like cotton candy and form very high in the sky - at a certain angle.
