What’s an airplane glory? Here’s how to spot one

Science matters. Wonder matters. You matter. Join our 2026 Donation Campaign today.

Have you seen an airplane glory?

I was looking out the window of an airplane recently, and I saw the airplane’s shadow on a cloud. A rainbow seemed to surround it. What was it?

It sounds like the beautiful optical phenomenon known as the glory, also called an anti-corona or pilot’s bow.

Glories are surprisingly common. People traveling in airplanes see them all the time. A bright sun needs to be directly behind your head, say, high in the sky in the middle of the day. Below you, you need an ordinary cloud. As you look down, out the plane’s window toward the cloud, you see the shadow of the airplane. A multi-colored circle of light surrounds the plane’s shadow. That light is the glory.

The plane’s shadow doesn’t have anything to do with making the glory. The glory and the shadow both simply come from the same source: the sun above you.

Just before landing in #Vienna, we hit the clouds and the sun behind us cast a perfect halo around the plane’s shadow! One of the coolest things I’ve ever seen from a plane! ????

— Dr Catherine Russell (@seddyrocks.bsky.social) 2025-05-20T11:36:36.367Z

Here’s what makes a glory

Like a rainbow, a glory is centered on the antisolar point – the point opposite the sun – which coincides with your head’s shadow. And it coincides with the larger shadow of an airplane, if you’re looking out of an airplane window. So this point – the point where you’ll see the glory – must be opposite the sun’s position in the sky.

You might see that, when the sun is high in the sky and you’re on the ground, the antisolar point always lies below your horizon. That’s why, in order to see a glory, the clouds or fog causing it have to be located below the observer, in a straight line with a high sun and the observer’s eye.

Want to know more about what makes a glory? Try this page from Les Cowley of the great website Atmospheric Optics.

Where else you might see a glory?

Nowadays, most people see glories from airplanes. But they’re also commonly observed from very tall buildings. And, before the days of air travel, people spoke of glories they’d seen while mountain climbing. The same conditions – the sun behind and a cloud ahead – can also cast your shadow onto a mist while you’re scaling a tall peak. Then it’s possible to see a glory around the shadow of your own head. That type of glory is called a brocken spectre.

The glory is round, like the halo you sometimes see around the sun or moon. And it comes in muted rainbow colors.

Some glory photos from our EarthSky Community

Bottom line: An airplane glory is easy to see, if you watch for it. It’s the plane’s shadow cast on a cloud, or the ground, surrounded by a halo of light.

What makes a halo around the sun or moon?

Read more: What is airglow? This glowing light is not an aurora