On October 20, 2025, social media buzzed with reactions after a video surfaced showing mourners—most notably a middle-aged man lying prostrate and ap
On October 20, 2025, social media buzzed with reactions after a video surfaced showing mourners—most notably a middle-aged man lying prostrate and appearing to ‘worship’—beneath a striking circular rainbow around the sun during the 40-day observance of the late Apostle Kwadwo Safo Kantanka.
Apostle Safo Kantanka, the revered founder and leader of the Kristo Asafo Church, was widely celebrated in Ghana as a visionary inventor and a ‘living genius.’
As Ghana and the rest of Africa aspire to match the pace of technological advancement seen in the Western world, Apostle Kwadwo Safo Kantanka was arguably one of the pioneers of that vision.
From inventing talking vehicles and automated toilets to locally manufacturing armored cars and aircraft, his extraordinary ingenuity earned him admiration and respect from both academia and the general public. To his followers, he was more than a leader — he was a ‘demigod.’
It was therefore unsurprising that his church members interpreted the circular rainbow that appeared during his 40-day observance as a divine sign — a revelation of his continued presence. Their actions, however, sparked widespread ridicule on social media.
But this isn’t about judgment; it’s about understanding what truly happened in the humid Ghanaian sky that day.
Interestingly, that was not the first time such a phenomenon had appeared in Ghana. I vividly remember witnessing a similar sight in 2012, as a JHS 2 student in Obuasi. Like the Kristo Asafo members, my friends and I thought it was a heavenly sign — perhaps the second coming of Christ — after hearing countless tales about the end times.
So, what exactly was that phenomenon in the sky?
Much like the ordinary rainbow we often see after rainfall, this optical spectacle is known as a “halo”, or more specifically, a 22-degree halo.
A halo is a ring of light that appears around the sun or moon when sunlight or moonlight refracts — bends — through millions of tiny ice crystals suspended in thin cirrus clouds high in the atmosphere. The result is a bright, often white, circular ring, though it sometimes displays faint colors.
Think of it this way: imagine the sun as a powerful torch shining through a room, and between the light and your eyes sits a glass prism — a clear, polished object that bends and splits light into different directions. The same principle explains the mesmerizing ‘circular rainbow’ that stunned mourners that day.
As sunlight passes through this natural “optical structure,” it splits into the familiar rainbow spectrum — red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet (ROYGBIV). This process is called refraction, the bending or redirection of light as it moves from one medium to another.
When sunlight encounters millions of ice crystals suspended in high-altitude cirrus or cirrostratus clouds, the light is refracted and separated at a 22-degree angle, forming a circular band of color — the stunning halo witnessed that day.
That’s the simple physics behind the phenomenon: sunlight, ice crystals, and geometry working together to create an illusion of a “circular rainbow” around the sun.
Halos are more common in colder regions, where ice crystals are abundant, but they can also appear in tropical climates like Ghana’s — especially during the rainy season when high, thin clouds are present.
Interestingly, some interpretations reach beyond science. In Greek mythology, the halo-like ring is sometimes linked to the punishment of Ixion, a king condemned to spin forever on a fiery wheel in the sky — a poetic, ancient attempt to explain what science now understands as a beautiful interplay of light and ice.