This is a phenomenon known as a fire rainbow

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    1. This is a fragment of a circumhorizontal arc because the cirrus cloud is patchy. In its full form, the arc has the appearance of a large, brightly spectrum-colored band running parallel to the horizon, with red on top.

      It’s caused by the refraction of sunlight (or light from a full or nearly full Moon) in plate-shaped ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere. It’s more common in the U.S. than in Europe because it requires that the sun be high in the sky.

      The misleading name “fire rainbow” to describe fragmentary arcs is of recent vintage, apparently coined in 2006. In fact it is not a rainbow formed by water droplets but a type of ice halo formed by ice crystals. Nor, of course, is it in anyway related to fire.

      [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumhorizontal_arc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumhorizontal_arc)

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