A dramatic image of Stonehenge made the rounds on social media in July 2025, just before the month's end. The image, according to a Facebook post (archived) with over 70,000 reactions in two days, was of an "Incredibly rare 'Solar Halo' spotted over Stonehenge."
The image quickly spread to other social media sites, such as Reddit (archived) and X (archived).
However, the image of the solar halo over Stonehenge was not a real photograph. The dramatic view was artificially created by editing two AI-generated images together.
A reverse image search on Tineye revealed that the top portion of the image, the solar halo, was an AI-generated stock image available in the Adobe Stock library. Not only was the solar halo itself identical between the Stonehenge image and the stock image, the Stonehenge image also contained the exact same tree in the upper left of the image that was visible in the same place in the stock image.
Google Street View images from the time showed that there were no trees in the immediate vicinity of Stonehenge.
As for the bottom half of the image, the patterns and shapes of the stones did not match how Stonehenge looked in reality.
Photos from the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, Stonehenge tour companies and from tourists who shared their photos with Google Maps showed that there wasn't a portion of the structure that could be photographed so three intact stone arches stood side-by-side in front of the rest of the stones distantly in the background. Additionally, the grass around Stonehenge was generally kept short, unlike the grass in the AI-generated image.
The Sightengine AI-detection website found a 99% probability that someone "likely" generated both the whole image and a crop of just Stonehenge with AI.
The Facebook page that posted the image, Ethereal Earth, has regularly presented AI-generated images as real photos. A month before posting the Stonehenge image featuring the AI-generated solar halo from Adobe Stock, Ethereal Earth posted that very same stock image (archived) and said it was taken in Minnesota. And just a few days before posting the more popular Stonehenge image, Ethereal Earth posted a different AI-generated image of Stonehenge (archived).
Solar haloes are a real, natural phenomenon, albeit usually hazier in appearance than the one generated in the Stonehenge image. The National Weather Service (NWS) forecast office in La Crosse, Wisconsin, said that sun haloes are usually formed when light refracts off ice crystals present in cirrus clouds, which are thin, wispy clouds high in the atmosphere. Those clouds are usually present in front of or close to the sun in photos of solar haloes.
For further reading, Snopes previously fact-checked a claim about Stonehenge and Daylight Savings Time. The image atop that story showcased a real solar halo seen behind Stonehenge.