For the past week, sky watchers in the UK have witnessed a rare apparition of polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs). Normally restricted to the Arctic Circle, the fantastically colorful clouds have appeared over the British Isles almost every day since Jan. 31st. Colin Fraser photographed the display over Edinburgh, Scotland, on Feb. 2nd:
PSCs form in the lower stratosphere when temperatures drop to a staggeringly-cold -85ºC. High-altitude sunlight shining through tiny ice particles ~10µm wide produce bright iridescent colors by diffraction and interference.

But there is more to PSCs than ice. Some polar stratospheric clouds contain very small droplets of naturally occurring nitric and sulphuric acids. These droplets destroy ozone. Indeed, atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley points out that a temporary ozone hole has formed over Ireland and the UK. It is the blue patch in this Feb. 1st ozone map from NASA's Arctic Ozone Watch:

The stunning clouds were pictured by people in a number of places, including Dublin and Belfast

A number of people noticed amazing rainbow coloured clouds in the sky over Ireland this morning.

The stunning clouds were pictured by people in a number of places, including Dublin and Belfast.

They are known as polar stratospheric clouds or nacreous clouds and usually appear during winter at high latitudes like Scandinavia, Iceland, Alaska and Northern Canada.

The clouds are quite rare in Ireland and are mostly visible within two hours after sunset or before dawn.

They appeared as Storm Henry continues to batter the country.

People across Leicester were left astounded this afternoon when an unusual cloud formation appeared in the sky.

The formation, which looked like a rainbow around an oval of bright light, appeared at about 5pm in an otherwise murky, grey sky.

Witnesses took photos of the phenomenon and uploaded them to Twitter, many commenting on the "beautiful" appearance.

Leicester Mercury weatherman Dave Mutton said the formation was the result of a cold front moving from the North down to the South.

The surface of the sun writhes and dances. Far from the still, whitish-yellow disk it appears to be from the ground, the sun sports twisting, towering loops and swirling cyclones that reach into the solar upper atmosphere, the million-degree corona - but these cannot be seen in visible light. Then, in the 1950s, we got our first glimpse of this balletic solar material, which emits light only in wavelengths invisible to our eyes.

Once this dynamic system was spotted, the next step was to understand what caused it. For this, scientists have turned to a combination of real time observations and computer simulations to best analyze how material courses through the corona. We know that the answers lie in the fact that the sun is a giant magnetic star, made of material that moves in concert with the laws of electromagnetism.

"We're not sure exactly where in the sun the magnetic field is created," said Dean Pesnell, a space scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "It could be close to the solar surface or deep inside the sun - or over a wide range of depths."

Getting a handle on what drives that magnetic system is crucial for understanding the nature of space throughout the solar system: The sun's magnetic field is responsible for everything from the solar explosions that cause space weather on Earth - such as auroras - to the interplanetary magnetic field and radiation through which our spacecraft journeying around the solar system must travel.

So how do we even see these invisible fields? First, we observe the material on the sun. The sun is made of plasma, a gas-like state of matter in which electrons and ions have separated, creating a super-hot mix of charged particles. When charged particles move, they naturally create magnetic fields, which in turn have an additional effect on how the particles move. The plasma in the sun, therefore, sets up a complicated system of cause and effect in which plasma flows inside the sun - churned up by the enormous heat produced by nuclear fusion at the center of the sun - create the sun's magnetic fields. This system is known as the solar dynamo.

These glowing polar stratospheric clouds were spotted floating over the UK on January 29, 2016.

That's the second sighting in two days after those spotted over Murmansk on Wednesday morning.
These nacreous clouds were captured from Aberdeen to Stoneheaven, Scotland, UK by lucky stargazers.

The mother-of-pearl clouds appeared in the sky before sunrise and were highly glowing and reflective.
Polar stratospheric clouds form in the winter polar stratosphere between altitudes of 15000-25000 meters.

If you looked to the sky on Friday, you might have glimpsed a "fire rainbow". Rachel Purcell sent this picture to the Herald after being lucky enough to see it while in the Viaduct on Auckland's waterfront. "I was so pleased my camera captured the moment," she said.

MetService meteorologist Ciaran Doolin said the phenomenon was known as a circumhorizontal arc, or "ice halo". He could not say how statistically frequent they were, but said the weather service occasionally got calls from the public about them.

Website IFL Science says the arc occurs when the sun has risen higher than 58 degrees in the sky, which is most common over summer. "Aside from the position of the sun, the other ingredient to forming circumhorizontal arcs is cirrus clouds. Cirrus clouds are the thin, wispy clouds that occur at higher altitudes. Because the temperature is so low where these clouds exist, they are made of ice crystals." The plate-like crystals then act like prisms and refract light to create the rainbow and so are sometimes called "fire rainbows".

A cloud that took the form of a 'hand of God' holding a fireball dominated the skyline above the north coast the Portuguese island of Madeira.

And weather blogger Rogerio Pacheco, 32, could not believe his luck when he looked up at the clouds while commuters made their way to work in the morning rush hour.

The awe-inspiring snaps have since been shared online after Rogerio opted to post them on his blog.

Amazed onlookers have compared the bright orange cloud to everything from a flaming fist of fury to the iconic comet featured in the classic video game Final Fantasy VII.

Rogerio said: "As soon as I saw the sky, I was immediately intrigued and I just had to grab my camera to take photo.

"For me, the cloud looks like an outstretched hand with a fireball.

"I was not the only one who seemed to notice it and I could see other people also looking up at the sky.

"A lot of people seemed pleasantly surprised when they looked up at the sky and saw the cloud."

As births go, they don't come much more violent than the Moon's.

Some 4.5 billion years ago, the young Earth collided with a developing planet, Theia. But instead of dealing each other a glancing blow, chemical analysis shows the collision was head-on, disintegrating Theia and part of Earth into a hot swirling disk of water and dust surrounding what was left of Earth.

This mix eventually clumped together to become the Moon, a new study suggests.

The key to the findings is the unique oxygen "fingerprint" that is found in all the planets, moons, comets and asteroids in our Solar System, including the Earth and the Moon.

More than 99.9% of Earth's oxygen is "normal", with each atom containing eight protons and eight neutrons. But there are small quantities of slightly heavier oxygen - molecules with an extra neutron jammed in.

While this "fingerprint" is a reliable identifier, it has traditionally been very hard to detect. So the University of California Los Angeles-led team used new, super-sensitive equipment to analyse seven lunar rocks brought back by the Apollo 12, 15 and 17 missions, as well as a lunar meteorite, and compared them to six volcanic rocks from the Earth's mantle. They found their heavy oxygen levels to be almost identical - within five parts per million.

To have that level of similarity, the planetary objects must have crashed into each other straight on. A side blow couldn't account for that degree of mixing.

Residents of a regional Chinese town were left amazed by a huge, bright solar halo which seemed to crown a Buddhist temple monument.

The naturally-occurring marvel appeared above the Guiyuan Buddhist Temple in Wuhan, central China, on January 26 and lit up the sky with its colours, according to a report from People's Daily Online.

The rare 'Buddha's halo', which appears like a circular rainbow, rendered local people awe-struck and gazing up into the atmosphere.
Chinese social media lit up when a similar phenomenon appeared above Beijing in September 2015, with many not understanding it.
Solar halos, also known as 'sundogs' or 'mock suns', are caused by bright sunlight refracting through thin Cirrostratus clouds in the sky.

Toowoomba was in the firing line of severe thunderstorms on January 23, 2016. Here some amazing pictures of an apocalyptical storm cell swallowing the sunset sky of 'The Garden City' and its surroundings.

All pictures found on the Higgins Storm Chasing Facebook page.