Brocken Spectre and Glory: Portrait of Temple Grandin, 2022, David Lenz, is on display at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery through November 15, 2026.

I took this video from the airplane window on the way to my gallery talk at the National Portrait Gallery. The circle of light and color is called a glory.

Glories commonly form when sunlight projects your image on clouds or mist, and they are magical!

Glories are not rainbows. Rainbows form when sunlight bounces around inside of raindrops, which are about 1000 times bigger than mist droplets. The larger raindrops produces a much larger bow and more intense separation of the colors.