A weather system to our south is far enough away that we are avoiding its rain, but it’s close enough that it’s throwing a thin veil of clouds over us. Those clouds gave some of us in eastern Iowa an interesting sight: a halo around the sun. The halo appears as a circle that goes all the way around the sun.

The air is cold where the clouds are, so they’re made of ice crystals. In this case, they were six-sided ice crystals, and the sunlight bent just right as it passed through them. Haloes can appear any time of year, but they’re more common in the winter on a very cold and sunny morning or evening. Ice crystals tend to be floating in the air on those frigid days.