Magical Rainbow Ring Caught On Camera From Drone

You'll be hard-pressed to find the pot of gold at the end of this rainbow.

Legend has it that leprechauns stash treasure wherever the multi-colored arc touches the ground. But this rainbow doesn't actually make contact with the Earth.

Instead, it forms a mesmerizing 360-degree ring that looks like it's floating inches above the land. Martin McKenna captured the spectacular sight over Cookstown in Northern Ireland on Monday with a smartphone attached to a drone.

"It was all grey skies and pouring rain, completely miserable. (But) the clouds parted, the sun came out and this rainbow came over the trees," he told the Belfast Telegraph.

"As it rose higher, there was a transition from a rainbow into a complete circle," McKenna added. "It's impossible to see from ground level. It was just unbelievable. I'm still buzzing from it."

A rainbow in its total form never truly ends. "Our ground-based vantage prevents us from seeing the full, colorful circle of refracted light. But when you're high enough in the sky, and when the light is just right a full rainbow is a sight to behold," The Washington Post reports.

You'd have to be in a skyscraper or plane to witness the spectacle of a 360-degree rainbow, and the sun's height rules how much of the circle is visible. But they are not actually rare.

NASA explained the phenomenon best when it chose Colin Leonhardt's image (above) of a 360-degree rainbow taken from a helicopter flying over Cottesloe Beach in Perth, Western Australia, as its Astronomy Picture of the Day in October 2014.

"From the ground, typically, only the top portion of a rainbow is visible because directions toward the ground have fewer raindrops. From the air, though, the entire 360 degree circle of a rainbow is more commonly visible," NASA wrote.