Ice clouds create festive sparkle on the US national holiday

On the Fourth of July in 2018, ice clouds over Mexico created a festive sparkle in this image of Earth taken from a point four times farther than the Moon. The sparkle comes from horizontally oriented ice crystals that float in clouds and act as a myriad of tiny mirrors. The glint (called subsun) from these crystals appears colorful because the camera captured the red, green, and blue images a few minutes apart, and the Earth’s rotation shifted the location where the camera could see the glint. The image is zoomed to better appreciate the colors.
*Submitted on behalf of the EPIC Team https://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/