Victoria Falls

Zambia

May 29. 2024

Everything you wanted to know about Rainbows:

A rainbow is a multicolored arc made by light striking water droplets.

The most familiar type of rainbow is produced when sunlight strikes raindrops in front of a viewer at a precise angle    (42 degrees). Rainbows can also be viewed around fog, sea spray, or waterfalls.

A rainbow is an optical illusion—it does not actually exist in a specific spot in the sky. The appearance of a rainbow depends on where you are standing and where the sun (or other source of light) is shining.

The sun or other source of light is usually behind the person seeing the rainbow. In fact, the center of a primary rainbow is the antisolar point, the imaginary point exactly opposite the sun.

Rainbows are the result of the refraction and reflection of light. Both refraction and reflection are phenomena that involve a change in a wave's direction. A refracted wave may appear "bent," while a reflected wave might seem to "bounce back" from a surface or other wavefront.

Light entering a water droplet is refracted. It is then reflected by the back of the droplet. As this reflected light leaves the droplet, it is refracted again, at multiple angles.

The radius of a rainbow is determined by the water droplets' refractive index. A refractive index is the measure of how much a ray of light refracts (bends) as it passes from one medium to another—from air to water, for example. A droplet with a high refractive index will help produce a rainbow with a smaller radius. Saltwater has a higher refractive index than freshwater, for instance, so rainbows formed by sea spray will be smaller than rainbows formed by rain.

Rainbows are actually  full circles. The antisolar point is the center of the circle. Viewers in aircraft can sometimes see these circular rainbows.

Viewers on the ground can only see the light reflected by raindrops above the horizon.  Because each person's horizon is a little different, no one sees a full rainbow from the ground. In fact, no one sees the same rainbow—each person has a different antisolar point, each person has a different horizon. Someone who appears below or near the "end" of a rainbow to one viewer will see another rainbow, extending from his or her own horizon.

Colors

A rainbow shows up as a spectrum of light: a band of familiar colors that include red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. The name "Roy G. Biv" is an easy way to remember the colors of the rainbow, and the order in which they appear: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. (Many scientists, however, think "indigo" is too close to blue to be truly distinguishable.)

White light is how our eyes perceive all the colors of the rainbow mixed.  Sunlight appears white. 

When sunlight hits a rain droplet, some of the light is reflected. The electromagnetic spectrum is made of light with many different wavelengths, and each is reflected at a different angle. Thus, the spectrum is separated, producing a rainbow.

Red has the longest wavelength of visible light, about 650 nanometers. It usually appears on the outer part of a rainbow's arch. Violet has the shortest wavelength (about 400 nanometers) and it usually appears on the inner arch of the rainbow.

At their edges, the colors of a rainbow overlap. This produces a sheen of "white" light, making the inside of a rainbow much brighter than the outside.

Visible light is only part of a rainbow. Infrared radiation exists just beyond visible red light, while ultraviolet is just beyond violet. There are also radio waves (beyond infrared), x-rays (beyond ultraviolet), and gamma radiation (beyond x-rays). Scientists use an instrument called a spectrometer to study these invisible parts of the rainbow.

Rainbow Variations

Glow

The atmosphere opposite a rainbow, facing the sun, is often glowing. This glow appears when rain or drizzle is falling between the viewer and the sun.

The glow is formed by light passing through raindrops, not reflected by them. Some scientists call this glow a zero-order glow.

Double Rainbow

Sometimes, a viewer may see a "double rainbow." In this phenomenon, a faint, secondary rainbow appears above the primary one.