RIVERINA resident Bill Pippen caught a semi-rare atmospheric phenomenon on camera earlier this month as it formed up to a dozen kilometres off the ground.
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Mr Pippen was out for his regular swim in Coolamon on the afternoon on December 13 when he spotted a 'sun halo' in the sky.
"I swim for half an hour each day and when I was nearly finished the swim I looked up and saw some rainbow colours in the sky," he said.
"I don't go around looking at the sun because it's bloody bright, but i realised it was a second rainbow below a halo around the sun.
"I thought 'that is interesting'. I didn't have a camera with me then but I thought when I got back to the flat I'll get a look at it, get by a tree and sneak up on it."
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Mr Pippen said the halo was formed when the sun shone through a thin cirrostratus cloud, comprised of ice crystals, which can form at altitudes from 6 to 13 kilometres high.
"It's like light going through a prism, it's refraction. It's not totally rare but it's rare for people to see it," Mr Pippen.
"It's like a rainbow but the colours are reversed. The violet is on the outside of the curve and the red and yellow is on the inside.
"You can get the same thing around the moon and it very often leads to wet weather or a change a few days later."
Sun halos have been taken as omens of good or bad luck throughout the centuries, but Mr Pippen said he was fortunate to capture the images.
"The photos are all guesswork as you can't look directly at it but they came out better than I thought," he said.