Pilot ’s glorification is an optical deception that make it come along like a plane ’s trace is being lit up by a rainbow - colored halo . It might calculate like an eerie sign of supernatural intervention , but there is some scientific discipline behind it .

Take a look at this footage ( below ) shared by Southwest Airlines last month . Filmed by a passenger on a commercial-grade airplane , it render the shadow of the aircraft on the cloud below surrounded by a burnished circular rainbow . As the darkness move , the glory appears to move with it .

Also known as a glory or pilot ’s bow , pilot ’s glorification is produced by standardized processes thatcreate a rainbow , but with a twist .

Thephenomenonactually has very slight to do with the phantom . It simply occurs in the same localization as the shadow because this is the antisolar point , the spot directly opposite the Sun from an observer ’s perspective . In other word , the Sun is like a shot behind the shadow and the aureole from the looker .

The rainbow colour is produced by water droplets above the swarm that scatter the sun back towards a reference of light .

Sojourner Truth be told , scientist still are n’t all decided on how resplendency are formed and the theory arepretty complex .

We do know , however , that they appear in a number of other circumstances . Before aviation , halo were sometimes envision by climbers when they seem down a mountain at their own shadow with the sunlight directly behind them .

One of theearliest descriptionsof the phenomenon comes from 1735 by a group of Gallic Explorer climb the Peruvian Andes . They describe it as : “ a phenomenon which must be as old as the world , but which no one seems to have observed so far … What seemed most remarkable to us was the appearance of a gloriole or glorification around the head , consisting of three or four small concentric circles , very bright colored , each of them with the same colors as the elementary rainbow , with cherry outermost . ”

Interestingly , they also point out another peculiar feature of speech of glories : “ The most surprising affair was that , of the six or seven people that were present , each one saw the phenomenon only around the shadow of his own nous , and saw nothing around other people ’s heads . ”