• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

The Real End Of A Rainbow?

We have a thread on rainbows.

When a relation of mine was dying and her far-flung family returned from various places they all saw a big clear rainbow that stayed with them the whole time, even though some flew in from abroad. Her favourite song was Over The Rainbow and it was played at her funeral.

Some years later in Hungary I was strolling along thinking about her, for no particular reason, and turned a corner into square where a busker with a violin began playing that very song. Rainbows, y'see. They're special.
 
Andylkl1 said:
I suppose that a rainbow with a full circle looks like this?
Embedded link is dead. No archived version found.
Click to expand...

Here's an alternative photo illustrating a fully circular rainbow. You can't see the full circle unless you're in an elevated position, such as the helicopter in this case. NOTE: This view of a fully circular rainbow in the distance isn't the same thing as a glory.
How to see a full circle rainbow

FullCircularRainbow.jpg

Full circle rainbow was captured over Cottesloe Beach near Perth, Australia in 2013 by Colin Leonhardt of Birdseye View Photography. He was in a helicopter flying between a setting sun and a downpour.​

When sunlight and raindrops combine to make a rainbow, they can make a whole circle of light in the sky. But it’s a very rare sight. Sky conditions have to be just right for this, and even if they are, the bottom part of a full-circle rainbow is usually blocked by your horizon. That’s why we see rainbows not as circles, but as arcs across our sky. ...
Click to expand...
SOURCE: https://earthsky.org/earth/can-you-ever-see-the-whole-circle-of-a-rainbow/
 
Last edited:
EnolaGaia said:
here's an alternative photo illustrating a fully circular rainbow. You can't see the full circle unless you're in an elevated position, such as the helicopter in this case. NOTE: This view of a fully circular rainbow in the distance isn't the same thing as a glory.

SOURCE: https://earthsky.org/earth/can-you-ever-see-the-whole-circle-of-a-rainbow/
Click to expand...
I find it interesting that a rainbow is always described as a rain-'bow,' or - as in the above great photograph a full circular rainbow. However, would it be true to suggest that a rainbow is only visible at its edges - as we normally see it, couldn't it just as easily be a full 'bubble' with the visible spectrum being only visibly refracted at its edges. (i.e., the centre of the bubble cannot visibly be seen?) . . . Or another possibility is that it is in the shape of a cone, so that the photo - as taken above, means that the helicopter was hovering at the dead centre of the cone?
 
Last edited:
A rainbow will be made out of the parts of the spectrum that gets split up by water. That likely includes some part we can't see, but not for example x-rays. So the bow is a bit thicker than it appears but it's not a bubble.
 
Sid said:
Or another possibility is that it is in the shape of a cone, so that the photo - as taken above, means that the helicopter was hovering at the dead centre of the cone?
Click to expand...
This is the most accurate way of looking at it. The rainbow appears along the edges of a cone - actual several cones, one for each colour, as well as numerous additional cones that define the secondary rainbow and any additional bows caused by diffraction or reflection.
the-rainbow-cone.png

https://atoptics.co.uk/rainbows/primcone.htm
 
rynner2 said:
Also how the sky is slightly darker between the two bows than elsewhere
(but I forget the explanation for this!)
Click to expand...
That's called Alexander's Dark Band, not to be confused with Alexander's Ragtime Band.
https://atoptics.co.uk/rainbows/adband.htm

Note that many of the dead links further up this thread go to Les Cowley's old site, which can now be found at the Atoptics site.
 
I have seen double rainbows and once a triple rainbow, but my younger daughter and husband tells this situation from their past travels.

They came across a unusually bright and large based rainbow going across the road they were on.

My daughter claimed when they drove into this particular rainbow it was bizarre as all the colors were so strong making some plants red, some trees orange and so on going down through the colors a rainbow has.

They could not stop to investigate because of traffic, but unfortunately no gold was seen.
 
When I saw this thread it reminded me of my rainbow experience. It was about 15 years ago, maybe more, and my girlfriend and I were driving back from South Molton in Devon on what I call the old South Molton road (the B3227). When we came off the North Devon link road onto this road we saw an impressive rainbow up ahead. We got closer and closer to it as we drove along and then quite unexpectedly we came around a sharp bend in the road and there was the end of the rainbow right on the road and we went straight through it! There's no doubt that the end of this rainbow was on that spot, you could see the hedge on the opposite lane through it.

I was astonished because like most people I'd always believed that one could never find the end of a rainbow, let alone drive through one!

The only person I've told about it was my mother (who's since passed away), but she didn't seem that impressed by it!
 
Apologies to charliebrown, I've just seen your post about your daughter driving through a rainbow. I didn't see that before. I guess I'm not the only one that this has happened to.
 
No apologies needed !

Since rainbows is a light refraction, I too thought it was impossible to find the end of a rainbow.

My daughter’s rainbow story really surprised me.

The bizarre part of her rainbow story was the intensity of the different colors on the road.
 
charliebrown said:
Since rainbows is a light refraction, I too thought it was impossible to find the end of a rainbow.
Click to expand...
Well, technically it is impossible. But there are a whole host of other effects that could contribute to the illusion that you have found, or passed through, the end.

Rynner described one upthread; the Circumzenithal arc looks like a fragment of a rainbow directly overhead.
 
We could see the rainbow ahead of us as we wound our way along the road and then as we rounded the bed there was this band of colours exactly where the end of the rainbow appeared to be. That's all I can say really. It all happened very quickly but it certainly looked to us like we had gone through the end of of a rainbow.
 
My mother claimed she had once walked through a rainbow and that it was a 'most perculiar feeling' but she couldn't really describe it. I thought she's probably made a mistake or imagined it but I didn't really question her, even though we'd done rainbows in science and I thought it impossible. It was clearly a special event for her and I didn't want to burst her bubble by being a smartarse!

Having read some of the preceeding accounts and possible explainations I'm glad I didn't. :)
 
From what people have said walking or driving through the end of a rainbow seems to be a very rare situation.

Xanatic suggestion of making a wish is a great idea.

At the end of a rainbow we maybe dealing with forces we do not understand like granting wishes.
 
charliebrown said:
From what people have said walking or driving through the end of a rainbow seems to be a very rare situation.

Xanatic suggestion of making a wish is a great idea.

At the end of a rainbow we maybe dealing with forces we do not understand like granting wishes.
Click to expand...
Yes, I like that idea... why not? I'm totally open minded about that sort of thing. I wish I'd thought of it at the time. I did wonder momentarily whether it may have been some sort of sign of good things to come but I don't know. I didn't win the lottery or anything (alas), but some aspects of our life did improve shortly after that so maybe it was a good sign in a way.
 
Took this photograph this afternoon and as you will see it's a double rainbow.
One thing I've noticed is that the second bow (the one to the right in the photo) has the rainbow colours the reverse of the brighter one on the left.
It's has a little bit of fuzziness to it ~ simply because I took the photo through a window as it was still partly raining outside at the time.
1667343724827.png
 
Sid said:
Took this photograph this afternoon and as you will see it's a double rainbow.
One thing I've noticed is that the second bow (the one to the right in the photo) has the rainbow colours the reverse of the brighter one on the left.
It's has a little bit of fuzziness to it ~ simply because I took the photo through a window as it was still partly raining outside at the time.
View attachment 60385
Click to expand...
Coincidentally, spotted another double rainbow this evening, (sighted to the SSW in my garden) the one at #55 was taken looking to the SSE.
Double Bow 2023.JPG
 
Here's a pink sunset rainbow my wife photographed a week ago. The light that formed the bow came directly from a setting sun, and contains mostly red light - visually, you could see a little yellow and green, but absolutely no blue. Indeed, there is a dark strip where the blue should be.

pinkbow.jpg


Some people have suggested that this phenomenon may have been caused by the Canadian forest fires far to the west, with smoke particles blowing across the Atlantic; but I'm not sure.
 
Last edited:
eburacum said:
Here's a pink sunset rainbow my wife photographed a week ago. The light that formed the bow came directly from a setting sun, and contains mostly red light - visually, you could see a little yellow and green, but absolutely no blue. Indeed, there is a dark strip where the blue should be.

View attachment 67567

Some people have suggested that this phenomenon may have been caused by the Canadian forest fires far to the west, with smoke particles blowing across the Atlantic; but I'm not sure.
Click to expand...
Nice, especially with the dark silhouette of the leaves in the foreground.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top