Rare things that have been documented much better than UFOs

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!

Ann K said:

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.

Click to expand...

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.