They were friends. Why would you pretend it to be not real?
Contrails is mostly water vapor (converts to ice crystals, like snow) - stay from less than a second up to a couple of hours based upon surrounding conditions. Like snow, but much finer particles so do not fall fast.
This does not, however, explain the rainbow-like halo that is reported and seen by yours truly on several occasions. The halo is the smoking gun pointing towards light being reflected off of shiny surfaces of small metallic particles projecting between the light source and the observer, as opposed to an ordinary rainbow where light is broken through the prism of droplets of water into the rainbow pattern projecting away from the light source.
Q has posted a picture of one halo like this.
Just a thought…