Somewhere UNDER the rainbow... Amateur photographer captures rare colourful display in his back garden
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If you think you know what a rainbow looks like, think again - this series of amazing images shows the moment upside-down rainbows were spotted in the sky.
The extremely rare weather phenomenon was seen in the blue sky above Blackpool recently.
Known as circumzenithal arcs, the spectacle occurs when sunlight bounces off ice crystals high in the atmosphere, sending the light rays back up and bending the sunlight into a band of colours.
Web designer Ian Brookes has spotted a rare instance of circumzenithal arcs, or upside-down rainbows, in the UK. The photo above shows one of the snaps he took above Blackpool. The rare phenomenon is usually only seen near the North and South poles
Web designer Ian Brookes saw the rainbow shining down at him last month and rushed to get his camera to capture the bizarre spectacle.
Mr Brookes, 43, said: 'I've never seen anything like it before but there it was - directly upwards in the sky from my back garden.
'It was a very sunny evening, a blue sky with only a few tiny bits of white cloud, but you couldn't miss the rainbow.
'I was amazed, and my wife and daughter couldn't believe their eyes. They thought it was simply wonderful.'
Upside-down rainbows are usually found in the North and South Poles and are formed when light shines through tiny ice crystals in the clouds.
The arc only appears when the sunlight catches a specific angle through thin clouds at a heights of around 25,000ft (7,600m).
Because of the altitude, the clouds are made of tiny ice crystals, unlike traditional rainbows that form due to reflection and refraction of light in water droplets.
And unlike an ordinary rainbow, the sky has to be clear of rain and low level clouds for a circumzenithal arc to be seen.
The colours in a circumzenithal arc are also in reverse order from a rainbow, with violet on the top and red at the bottom.
'Upside-down rainbows or circumzenithal arcs are an example of a halo,' Charles Powell, a Forecaster for the Met Office, tells MailOnline.
'Similar to a rainbow, a halo is formed when light is reflected by ice crystals (instead of water droplets).
'If the light rays strike the ice crystals at a particular angle the light is refracted which gives a slight colouration.
'The ideal angle is 46° and typically only part of the halo forms, appearing like an arc convex to the sun, hence the upside down perspective.'
The amazing photos show a rainbow that appears to be the wrong way up. Upside-down rainbows form when sunlight reflects off ice crystals in cloudsat high altitude. Meteorologists say the clouds must be convex to the sun, with the ice particles lined up together in the right direction, to refract the light
The colours in a circumzenithal arc are in reverse order from a regular rainbow (stock image shown), with violet on the top and red at the bottom. And unlike a normal rainbow the sky has to be clear of rain and low level clouds for an upside-down rainbow to be seen
Mr Brookes' spot is one of only a handful of occasions where this phenomenon has been captured in the UK.
He used a Canon 6D DSLR to capture the extraordinary moment.
Mr Brookes added: 'It was only there for about five minutes before it started to fade so I rushed inside the house to grab my camera so I could catch it.
'It was truly unbelievable.'
A spokesman for the Met Office added: 'It is quite rare to see an arc as clearly as this in the UK. Visibility of these arcs can vary greatly with someone ten miles away not being able to see it.'
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