No it wasn’t a glory.
While flying on a sunny day with scattered clouds, I noticed that on rare occasions, the sun would reflect off of ponds or small lakes and if a cloud was in the right position and thin enough, I would see the light beam as a spot of light on the cloud, and around it was fringe of rainbow colors.
Is there a name for this phenomena? if not, can I claim it and name it?
It sure *sounds[/.I] like a glory. Without a picture or a better description, it’s hard top tell.
You can certainly get haloes around the sun or, presumably, the reflection of the sun. But these tend to be much larger in diameter, and with colors not well-separated
22 dfegree halo around the sun:
Glory:
There are tertiarty and quarternary rainbows that are very close to the sun, and are virtually never seen. They are incredibly faint:
This was sunlight reflected off of the surface of ponds and lakes where the light hits the cloud above it. I was above the cloud but it was thin enough to see the circular beam of light illuminating the cloud. It wasn’t light or rainbows directly from the sun…it was the reflected beam off the ponds with the rainbow fringes around the circular spot of light on the cloud
That is pretty unusual and I have not heard of that. Most meteorological phenomena are observed from the ground, not from planes. I have seen a circular rainbow in the clouds from a plane. I’m guessing it’s not that uncommon. However I’ve never seen the sun reflecting off of a lake and onto a cloud to form a rainbow.
Maybe you could do a more detailed search for strange aeronautical sightings.
Odds are it was still a form of glory or closely related phenomenon. You were seeing a light source on the ground (lake reflection) projecting light upwards against a bunch of water droplets (cloud) which in turn scattered the light into a small circular area of rainbow colors (circular spectrum) some light from which ended up flowing to where your eyes were.
These guys know everything. Atmospheric Optics They have lots of pix and explanations. The also have a picture of the day which updates a couple times a week. Shame you didn’t ask this a week ago because they just had one that’s likely relevant. But the way their site works you can’t just step to previous days’ pix.
The OP’s description sounds a lot like a corona, also described in the website that LSLGuy linked to, except it’s caused by the image of the sun reflected off a body of water rather than directly by the sun.
–Mark
alright I’m claiming discovery then. 
I’m confident it is a type of corona as mentioned but very specialized. I’m calling it a Sigene Corona. I’ll be notifying the authorities and submitting it to the proper meteorological journals.
Better names might be:
The ones that are some times seen in clouds of ice crystals are very neat also.
I think that probably the best explanation for the 2007 Alderney UFO was a reflection of sunlight onto clouds from greenhouses underneath them; there wasn’t any rainbow/corona, but the phenomenon did display some banding.
Well done for spotting the relationship between the lakes and the reflection, by the way.
hi, wasn’t the cloud acting as a prism , refracting the light (rainbow), so what you saw would be a rainbow but from a different viewpoint to the usual ? aren’t they just beautiful though ?