On a flight from Detroit to San Jose via Chicago then San Diego (I’m a cheapskate who rarely pays more for a non-stop flight) I briefly saw a glory on Saturday evening:

I wouldn’t have seen it but for an aborted landing (aborted while still several hundred feet up in the air, not sure why it happened), in which we banked left and ascended above the layer of clouds above San Diego for another pass at landing. Sometimes short delays while flying can be a good thing. The glory was only visible, if you were looking, for perhaps thirty seconds or so until the arc of flight exceeded the optical angle I could see through two windows near me.

This is the second time I’ve seen a glory while flying; the first time was on a flight from Boston to Minneapolis last year.