John Paterson

This arc of colours looks like an inverted rainbow, and forms high in the sky. It is like a fragment, closest to the Sun, of a circle around the the point directly above the viewer (known as the 'zenith'). Its colours are caused by a cloud's ice crystals diffracting the sunlight passing through. In this image, the ice crystals are in a low ice fog called diamond dust.

Full classification: , showing the optical effect:

Other examples of circumzenithal arc:
Robin Drayton

, circumzenithal arc