Brilliant Halo Over Devil's Tower

Walking the inner perimeter trail at Devil's Tower in Wyoming on Monday afternoon, September 18, 2017, the sky was mostly clear blue. Around 12:54 pm MDT, a small bank of cirrus clouds drifted directly overhead and began to create the sun halo seen in the iPhone camera image above. I had of course seen sun halos before, but this particular one was the most colorful and vivid as I had ever seen, and it was especially striking materializing over Devil's Tower-- (you know, with the Close Encounters of the Third Kind thing). Sun halos are produced by light interacting with ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere.

In just a few minutes the bank of cirrus clouds had passed, and with it the beautiful halo.