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  The corona photographed above the cat statue in Kuching.

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KUCHING: A rare, huge corona was spotted in the sky above Kuching on the morning of June 22nd.

During its appearance on Friday, the huge corona captured the public's attention. Some even took pictures of it with their mobile phones and then shared the photos to their friends via MMS.

Astronomers explained that the corona is the result of the diffraction of light from suspended ice crystals in an intervening cloud. The ice crystals are from cirrus clouds located at a height of 10,000 meters in the sky, therefore coronas are usually covered by clumps of thick cirrus clouds.

Normally coronas are ring-shaped or arc-shaped, and contain a total of seven colours which are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.

Coronas have been spotted before, especially last year, where they appeared on May 30th, July 29th and September 15th. However those coronas weren't as big as the one seen on Friday. Therefore, it caused quite a stir among the people.