Deborah Frantz, Age 10, Of Allentown, Pa., for her question:

What causes rainbow colored circles around the sun?

Sometimes the sun is circled with a thin halo of pale rainbow colors, and once in a great while loops and other patterns are added to the design. More often the sun's halo is milky white, but when it is tinted with rainbow colors the red band is on the inside of the circle. When the halos appear, the sky is nev er c1ear, for the pretty spectacles are caused by cloud particles in the air above the earth.

The sky may be tinted with a gauzy veil of grayish white, or it may be hidden behind a tissue thin curtain of filmy clouds. These veils are made of smaller than small crystals of glassy ice, floating perhaps four or five miles above our heads. The shiny crystals play tricks with the sunbeams on their way down to the earth. Their colors are separated and spread around the sun in circles of pale light.