(Photo: Phillip Clapper)

It's a rainbow-colored cloud! Or perhaps a fire rainbow. Or to put it more scientifically, it's a circumhorizontal arc. Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell of NASA describe the unusual conditions that are necessary for one of these natural wonders to appear in the sky:

For a circumhorizontal arc to be visible, the Sun must be at least 58 degrees high in a sky where cirrus clouds are present. Furthermore, the numerous, flat, hexagonal ice-crystals that compose the cirrus cloud must be aligned horizontally to properly refract sunlight in a collectively similar manner. Therefore, circumhorizontal arcs are quite unusual to see.

Continue reading to view more photos of fire rainbows.

Mildred, McConnell's grandmother, born 1928 (l), Christine is at right in every comparison shown 

Remember the lovely and talented Christine McConnell, who baked these superb scary sweets? Aside from crafting elaborately monstrous baked goods, back then I wrote that she also delivers them in a beautifully restored classic car, is an artist and photographer who does oil paintings, house painting and interior design, and makes most of her clothes by hand. What remains for superwomen such as McConnell to do? How about reflecting on their ancestors, from whom they may have inherited some of their talents? That's what Christine did here.

The Los Angeles-based creative decided to re-create old photos of her relatives in the family albums. The project resulted in a series that breathes new life into photos spanning from the 1800s to the 1980s. Her side-by-side comparisons  not only reveal the resemblance between McConnell and her foremothers but showcase her aptitude for sewing costumes. What will McConnell's next project be? I can't imagine, but I look forward to seeing it. 

See more of her series here, and follow McConnell's work at her Imgur albums and Instagram account.

Via TrendHunter | Images: Christine McConnell

Attie Mae, McConnell's great-grandmother, born 1898

Martha, McConnell's great-great-great-grandmother, born 1821

Redditor roselatte and his/her friends visited a Menchies frozen yogurt shop in Dublin, California. They're college students (hopefully engineering majors), so they don't have a lot of money. They decided to take full advantage of the shop's offer of all the frozen yogurt they could fit into a single cup for $5. Relying upon the tensile strength of waffle cones, they built, then ate this elaborate architectural marvel. Roselatte notes that "while building it, we never felt more American."

-via That's Nerdalicious!

(Photo: NASA Astronauts)

The Nile is a ribbon of water--of life--through the desert. You can see this especially clearly from orbit. At night, the lights of human settlements shine through the darkness, like a crack in the universe.

Fruit Loops Landscape (2012) by Cirej and Lochman

Junk food has never looked so ... beautiful!

In "Processed Views: Surveying the Industrial Landscape," artists and photographers Barbara Ciurej and Lindsay Lochman collaborated to capture the beauty of junk food - or as the duo called it, "the frontier of industrial food production: the seductive and alarming intersection of nature and technology."

"As we move further away from the sources of our food, we head into uncharted territory replete with unintended consequences for the environment and for our health," wrote Ciurej and Lochman on their website.

The miniature landscapes in "Processed Views" are inspired by the works of 19th century photographer Carleton Watkins, whose photographs captured the majesty of the American West. Watkins' work of Yosemite, for instance, led to the valley's preservation as a National Park. At the same time, however, many of Watkins' photographs were commissioned by the corporate interests of the railroad, mining, lumber and milling companies. Ciurej and Lochman noted that "[Watkins'] commissions served as both documentation of and advertisement for the American West."

Ciurej and Lochman's Fruit Loops Landscape (L) Watkins Albion River (1863) (R)

In similar light, Ciurej and Lochman built their junk food landscapes as a commentary on what we can call as today's food-industrial complex.

Regardless of what you think highly processed junk food tastes like, we're sure that Ciurej and Lochman's "Processed Views" are highly enjoyable. Take a look:

Moonrise on Bologna (2014)

Cola Sea from the series Processed Views (2013)

Marshmallow Chasm from the series Processed Views (2013)

Flamin' Hot Monolith (2013)

Monoculture Plains from the series Processed Views (2013)

Saturated Fat Foothills from the series Processed Views (2013)

Redditor nilla_waferz found this oddity: a banana peel with 2 whole bananas inside. You can see more photos here. He could make quite a banana split with them.

Vincent van Gogh

Self-portrait on canvas? That's a lot of work! What if the world's greatest painters discovered that taking selfies is much easier?

In this tongue in cheek ad campaign for Samsung NX Mini camera, photographer Fredrik Ödman and ad agency Leo Burnett teamed up to imagine what it would look like if Vincent van Gogh, Frida Kahlo, and Albrecht Dürer ditched their paintbrushes and opted to take selfies instead.

Now who said that selfies can't be high art?

Frida Kahlo

Albrecht Dürer

Via My Modern Met

New Year's Resolution #10: Get offline

New Year's Resolutions. Everyone's got them* ... for the next few weeks at least. But what if you could remind yourself every day of the promise that you made to yourself to do something (or not do something) this year?

Swedish graphic designer Viktor Hertz (previously on Neatorama) took the 12 most popular New Year's Resolutions into wonderful retro-styled posters. Now, we don't know whether staring at these gorgeous posters every day would make you stick better to your New Year's resolutions this year, but it can't hurt now, can it?

New Year's Resolution #1 Lose Weight and #2 Quit Smoking

New Year's Resolution #3 Recycle More and #4 No More Junk Food

New Year's Resolution #5 Drink Less Alcohol and #6 Explore The World

New Year's Resolution #7 Save More Money

via SutekhRising/reddit

A Jaws-inspired baby bed that looks like a shark eating a boat? Surely there is such a thing. What loving parents wouldn't want to keep their child save by instilling a healthy dose of fear of sharks and expensive hobbies such as boating?

By the look of that crying baby, we're going to need bigger diapers soon ... and in just a couple short months, they'll surely need a bigger bed. May we suggest the proud parents choose something completely different then, perhaps the clown bed from The Simpsons?

Visible wavelength (DSS/Wikisky)

The night's sky is full of wonders - and we're not talking just the stars that you can see with your naked eye. You'll want to see it in other wavelengths, too. But since we don't have X-ray vision, this is the next best thing.

We've blogged about Chromoscope before on Neatorama back in 2009, but it's worth revisiting. The Chromoscope project, built by Stuart Lowe, Chris North and Robert Simpson in 2009, lets you move across the Milky Way galaxy and view it in different electromagnetic wavelengths: visible light, gamma-ray, X-ray, Hydrogen alpha, near infrared, far infrared, microwave, and radio.

For examples:

X-ray (ROSAT All Sky Survey)

What are those tears in the galaxy? Don't worry those aren't tears in the space time continuum - those black arcs are gaps in the ROSAT spacecraft survey.

Gamma ray (Fermi All Sky Survey)

Hydrogen alpha (Wisconsin H-Alpha Mapper, The Southern H-Alpha Sky Survey Atlas / VTSS / Finkbeiner)

Near infrared

Far infrared (Infrared Astronomical Satellite)

Microwave (Planck Satellite)

Radio (Haslam 408 MHz)

Check it out: Chromoscope | Wondering what you're looking at? This blog post may have the answer.

Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark Batman!

"To me, a chainsaw is just a 3-D pencil," said Thomas Earing of Maple Valley, Washington to KOMO News. "You start scratching in the details. You try to get shadows. It just starts revealing a surface just like a printer would print."

And to prove that statement, the artist and wood carver has a large portfolio of carved pieces he has made over the last decade, including this beauty: The Bark Knight, a wooden carving sculpture of Batman.

According to redditor ninefivezero, the wooden Batman sculpture is 7 feet tall and is made from silver maple. We are slightly disappointed that it wasn't made from spruce, because, yew know, then the Bark Knight's alder ego would be Spruce Wayne.

Images above from Thomas Earing's Instagram - via ComicBook

Look at the size of this grizzly bear's paw! Those claws are several inches long, and can rip you to shreds. Charlie Shutt bagged the bear on the Deshka River outside of Anchorage, Alaska. Brandi Houser poses with the paw to show how large just a part of the bear is. You can use your imagination to extrapolate the size of the rest of the grizzly bear -with all the muscle necessary to use those claws. -Thanks, Lauren Shutt!

(Image source: Brandi Houser at Facebook)

Blind man driving? I certainly didn't see this one coming! A Gainesville, Florida, window blind installer sure had a bit of fun with his car advertisement.

via Imgur

A good headline writer is a font of gold. Or web traffic, which leads to gold. The Washington Post express edition has one. This was a headline for a print edition article about the impending divorce of comedian Chris Rock, which is hopefully resolved as amiably as a game of rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock.

-via Amanda Cormier

Google's job interviews are famously tough, but Alan felt confident: he had clearly passed the handshake test. Nonetheless, he felt a bit anxious when he realized that he should have visited the restroom before meeting the HR manager.

Dom Draper shot this photo for Red Bull. It shows Fred Fugen and Vincent Reffet 33,000 feet over Austria on May 13, 2014. But it could show something else as well. Think of the photo as a writing prompt. What caption or short short story does it inspire you to write?

-via Twisted Sifter