Smile, there's an upside-down rainbow in the sky over Sussex
First there was the eye of God - a dying star watching over us eerily from 700 light years away.
Now the heavens have become even more personal, as this stunning image of a smile in the sky shows.
The 'upside-down rainbow', spotted over Sussex, is in fact not a rainbow at all.
The smile in the sky looks like an upside-down rainbow but is caused by light shining through tiny ice crystals in the clouds
Rather than being caused by raindrops, it is the result of freak atmospheric conditions rarely seen outside the North and South Poles.
While normal rainbows are formed when light penetrates raindrops and emerges on the other side without changing direction, the smile is formed when sunlight shines through millions of tiny ice crystals in cirrus and cirrus stratus clouds.
Because the crystals are flat and hexagonal, they invert the light and create an upside-down curve called a circumzenithal arc.
The phenomenon relies on the sun being low in the sky, normally less than 32 degrees from the horizon.
The arcs can appear at any time of the year, hovering in the sky only fleetingly because clouds tend to move quickly near the zenith.
Nigel Blackwell, who runs a delivery business in Copthorne, near Crawley, captured the spectacle over a five-minute period on Valentine's Day this year, after his son alerted him to the grin.
Mr Blackwell, 55, said last night: 'It was a Saturday morning and my son was cleaning cars when he saw it. He was surprised and called me over.
'I went to get my camera and started taking pictures. It was in the sky for about five minutes from 11.28 to 11.33, as I followed the cloud moving slowly overhead. Then in an instant it was gone.
'My first impression was that it was an upside down rainbow but it was a clear, sunny day. It was February 14 and you have got to wonder whether that was why the sky was smiling.'
John Hammond, from the Met Office, said: 'This is a great example of a circumzenithal arc. It is unusual to see one so well defined.
'As well as being in the right place at the right time, the sun and cloud needs to be angled such that the arc is displayed below.
'The sun usually needs to be below an angle of about 32 degrees above the horizon.'
Just days after Mr Blackwell spotted the arc, scientists released captivating pictures of what they nicknamed the 'eye of God' - in fact the death throes of a star similar to our sun, before it turns into its final evolutionary 'white dwarf' state.
The images, captured by giant telescope in Chile, showed a blue pupil, the white of the eye and a pink lid, created by layers of gas and dust thrown off and illuminated by the star as it comes to the end of its life over the course of thousands of years.
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