Glory
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This is exactly what you call glory. Airplanes are one place to spot glory. The most common sightings are on mountaintops. In fact, that's where it was first reported. The mountain is in Germany and it's called The Brocken. There, glory earned the name brockenspectre.

In the early 1800s, mountaineers climbed through a combination of fog and sunlight. They thought they saw images of God warning them to climb no further. These apparitions to be nothing more than sunlight reflected through tiny cloud droplets. The droplets act as prisms, much like they do in rainbows.

Glory appears as a full circle, not as an arc like a rainbow. It is only visible when sunlight is at the observer's back. The shadow produced falls on a cloud and appears to be surrounded by a halo. When the sun is high, an airplane offers the best view point because the plane's shadow and the clouds are directly below. In the low-angled sunlight near dawn and dusk, the shadow of a hiker can project onto a nearby cloud. This creates what looks like a halloed companion.

If you would like to see images of glory, visit weathernotebook.org. The Weather Notebook is underwritten by Subaru: The beauty of all-wheel drive.