Earth from space: Warped ‘double rainbow’ glory appears next to rare cloud swirls over Mexican island | Space

This 2012 satellite photo shows a unique perspective of a rare, rainbow-like phenomenon, known as a glory, that appeared next to a Mexican island just as the landmass spawned a separate series of equally uncommon cloud vortices.

Glories are multicolor light shows similar to rainbows, with one key difference: While rainbows form via a combination of reflection and refraction when sunlight bounces off falling rain droplets and splits into different wavelengths, glories are created by backward diffraction — when light bounces directly off even smaller water droplets in clouds or mist, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory. Because of this, glories only appear exactly opposite the sun, known as the anti-solar point.