An Amazing Natural Display

One of the blogs I follow, Bad Astronomy, posted an amazing photo today. I must say, had I witnessed this in person I may have dropped to my knees, bowed my head and waited to be "beamed away"!

Is this not beautiful?

photo credit: David Hathaway, a solar physicist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center
in Huntsville, Alabama

An explanation of this phenomenon from the blog entry:

It’s funny what tiny little ice crystals can do. Floating high in the air, suspended by air currents, they hang there… and then a ray of sunshine enters them. The light gets bent due to complicated physics, the interplay of that beam of light passing from air to a solid crystal and out again. But once that beam leaves, the sky can light up with a wizard’s pattern of colors and shapes. And if you’re very, very lucky, you’ll see something that you’ll remember the rest of your life.

For a full explanation and more information about the photo, go here. Pretty amazing, eh?