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APOD: 2026 August 2 – A Fire Rainbow over West Virginia

August 4, 2026
5 min
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By ZadeNor AI Team
APOD: 2026 August 2 – A Fire Rainbow over West Virginia

APOD: 2026 August 2 – A Fire Rainbow over West Virginia

APOD

				APOD

								Astronomy Picture of the Day

			Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.			

								A Fire Rainbow over West Virginia

						Explanation: What's happening to this cloud? Ice crystals in a distant cirrus cloud are acting like little floating prisms. Known informally as a fire rainbow for its flame-like appearance, a circumhorizon arc appears parallel to the horizon. For a circumhorizontal arc to be visible, the Sun must be at least 58 degrees high in a sky where cirrus clouds present below -- in this case cirrus fibratus. The numerous, flat, hexagonal ice-crystals that compose the cirrus cloud must be aligned horizontally to properly refract sunlight in a collectively similar manner. Therefore, circumhorizontal arcs are somewhat unusual to see. The featured fire rainbow was photographed in 2021 near North Fork Mountain in West Virginia, USA.Tomorrow's picture: meteoric photobomb						

										Date:
										
											August 2, 2026											

										Credit & Copyright:
										
											Christa Harbig											

										Authors & editors:
										
											Robert Nemiroff, Jerry Bonnell, Cecilia Chirenti, Keighley Rockcliffe											

										A service of:
										
											ASD at NASA / GSFC,NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U.											

		Random APOD Generator

                    Yesterday's Image                    

                    APOD: 2026 August 1 – Buck Moon and Belt of Venus                    

                    Tomorrow's Image                    

                    APOD: 2026 August 3 – Vaporizing Meteor Photobombs the Lacerta Nebula

Source: https://science.nasa.gov/image-article/apod/apod-2026-august-2-a-fire-rainbow-over-west-virginia/

Source: https://science.nasa.gov/image-article/apod/apod-2026-august-2-a-fire-rainbow-over-west-virginia/

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