A stunning video showing a glowing ring encircling the sun — complete with bright flares and faint rainbow hues — has gone viral, leaving viewers mesmerised by what many called a “heavenly crown.”
The footage
was captured on a crisp winter day in Jämtland , where clear skies and freezing temperatures created the perfect conditions for a striking sun halo, a rare-looking but well-understood atmospheric phenomenon.
What is a sun halo?
The most common type, known as the 22-degree halo, appears as a luminous circle around the sun with a radius of about 22 degrees — roughly the width of an outstretched hand held at arm’s length. In the Jämtland video, the entire ring is visible, along with vivid sun dogs — bright patches on either side of the sun — and delicate colour fringes that give the scene an almost ethereal glow.
Such displays are more frequent in colder regions like Scandinavia, especially in winter, when the sun sits low on the horizon. This low angle makes the halo appear larger and more dramatic against the pale blue sky.
A spectacular sun halo in Jämtland, Sweden.
📽: Victoria Rennerståhlpic.twitter.com/kn8CROvTji
— Wonder of Science (@wonderofscience) December 20, 2025
The science behind the spectacle
High above the ground, at altitudes of around five to ten kilometres, thin cirrus clouds drift through the atmosphere. These wispy clouds are packed with countless microscopic ice crystals, each shaped like a perfect hexagon. Acting like tiny prisms, the crystals bend sunlight as it passes through them.
When light enters and exits the sides of these hexagonal crystals, it refracts by a minimum angle of 22 degrees. Because the crystals tumble randomly as they fall, light from all directions is bent in the same way. The combined effect of millions of refracted rays creates the bright circular halo around the sun.
The subtle rainbow colours appear because different wavelengths of light bend by slightly different amounts. Red light bends the least and forms the inner edge of the halo, while blues and violets bend more and appear toward the outer edge.
Why sun dogs appear
The bright spots flanking the sun — known as sun dogs or parhelia — form when ice crystals are flat and plate-shaped. As these crystals drift downward, they tend to align horizontally, concentrating sunlight into two glowing patches on either side of the sun, often with striking colour separation.
Viewers online described the scene as “nature at its finest” and “a crown from the heavens.” In reality, it’s pure physics — a reminder that ordinary sunlight interacting with tiny ice crystals can produce some of the most breathtaking sights in the sky.
