Rare things that have been documented much better than UFOs

[JMartJr]

I wondered if the "sun candle" might be seen more commonly from planes, since passenegrs are frequently above a cloud of ice crystals. I qucik search showed a lot of claimed examples that looked, to me, more like something that was happening due to window optice, and a few that seemed to be just the sun reflecting off a lake or ocean -- and one that looks a lot like the picture under discussion:

Mildly amusing note: When I went to get the source to link here, it turns out the picture is FROM here: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/in...non-subhorizon-halos-sub-sun-sub-sundog.3253/

It's getting all self referential up in here!

 

[Eburacum]

Additionally, as I understand, it's formed when sunlight REFLECTS off horizontal snowflakes, yet there's an orange top which looks more like refraction than reflection.

Well spotted!
It seems that these apparitions are not subsuns per se, but lower tangent arcs, which appear in approximately the same place and do display some colour.

https://atoptics.co.uk/blog/perfect-lower-tangent-arc-opod/

The bright white region at the bottom is a true subsun.

 

[Edward Current]

Okay, if y'all gonna post glorified rainbows as rare events (I think they are just cases of being in an uninhabitable place at the right time), then I raise you a fixed pole vs. a moving ice sheet.

 

[Mendel]

I raise you a fixed pole vs. a moving ice sheet

is this "happens every year in this place" rarity, or better?

 

[Edward Current]

is this "happens every year in this place" rarity, or better?

I have no idea. But in addition to being an unusual video, it's a good example of "I know what I saw!!!"

 

[JMartJr]

It does remind me of video of a "mysterious creature" swimming under a bridge, where apparently some plastic or cloth trash was stuck on a snag in the river, the current flowing by creating a nice illusion of something swimming past... unless you noticed that it never moved in relation to other non-moving objects intermittently in-frame.

 

[Ann K]

It does remind me of video of a "mysterious creature" swimming under a bridge, where apparently some plastic or cloth trash was stuck on a snag in the river, the current flowing by creating a nice illusion of something swimming past... unless you noticed that it never moved in relation to other non-moving objects intermittently in-frame.

Locally, a bike-and-hike trail was created along the river by laying down a wide black plastic sheet underneath the gravel to prevent weed growth. After a flood about twenty feet of that sheet floated loose while still tethered to the trail, and undulated in the river. I was sure there would be "Nessie" reports in Lake Erie if it ever got free!

 

[Eburacum]

But in addition to being an unusual video, it's a good example of "I know what I saw!!!"

It reminds me of one of the few successful 'UAP' identifications I have ever made. Someone wrote in to the Fortean Times forum describing a 'vertical floating cylinder' seen over the Pennines from a plane; I knew what it was, because I'd seen too (on a different occasion).

The top of the Emley Moor transmitter poking through a layer of cloud.