CHRONICLE reader Bryan Harris spotted this halo around the sun at Littleton Stud one morning last week.

Mr Harris, of Three Maids Close, Harestock, said: “I became aware of a curious cloud formation with a rainbow-like halo round the sun. The portrait format shows the entire sun and the landscape format cuts off the top half of the sun.

“The straightish horizontal white streaks are clouds, not aircraft contrails, and I suppose the water vapour in them is causing the rainbow effect.”

Such haloes are fairly common and form when light passes through certain kinds of ice crystals, usually when there are high-levels clouds such as cirrus and cirrostratus, which usually herald a front bringing rain.