Rainbow Bright

A rainbow captured in Canberra last week

Rainbows are generally pretty fascinating things.  If you're lucky you may catch a glimpse of a second rainbow outside the main one.  As with a lot of things things, luck is relative because really there are actually infinite rainbows outside each other which would make for quite a spectacular display.  The only problem is that the light is so weak we can't see them.

Next time you see one, have a look at the light inside the rainbow, then compare it to the light outside.  It looks brighter inside, and its not just your imagination there is more light inside that rainbow highlighting its effects.

Also, each rainbow looks slightly different for each observer, so when you see one think of yourself being in a truly unique situation.

Mathematics is so great we can explain all of these things with equations, but here we will just marvel at what we can see.

Now for budding rainbow watchers what are the best conditions to capture rainbows?

1. Find somewhere where there is precipitation as it is the raindrops which are doing the work of refracting the light so we see the rainbows.
2. Showers are better than rain as there are breaks between the clouds which allow the sunlight to penetrate and produce the rainbow, so watch out for fluffy cumulus type clouds.
3. Don't look towards the sun as the optical magic occurs when the sun is behind you.
4. Lastly, go rainbow catching in the early morning or late evening, in the middle of the day the angles make the rainbow below the horizon  so you can't see it.  At night there's no sun so no rainbows (although moonbows are still possible).

Now the tips are there, so go and catch a rainbow, and try to get one with some banding inside the rainbow as that surely is the holy grail of rainbow watching!