Ah yes, the irony of the "pot-of-gold-on-the-other-side-of-the-rainbow" myth. A rainbow has no end! Contrary to popular belief, rainbows are circular. Really, they're considered conical. From the ground, we can only see the upper half of the arc.
Full rainbows can be seen from way up high, so keep an eye out next time you find yourself in a spaceship or airplane. :) They come into view more and more as the sun reaches the horizon. The higher the sun travels, the smaller the arch.
This science blog says:
"Rainbows are formed by small water droplets in the air splitting the suns light into colours. Each colour has a consistent angle to the incoming light and so makes a circle (like a compass). Interestingly, the shadow of your head is always the centre of the circle, so unless our shadow heads overlap the rainbow you are looking at is always slightly different position to the rainbow I'm looking at. This is also why there is no "end of the rainbow": circles have no ends.
Nature is truly mystical.
Thanks to our neighbor, Chuck, for sharing this photo!
Full rainbows can be seen from way up high, so keep an eye out next time you find yourself in a spaceship or airplane. :) They come into view more and more as the sun reaches the horizon. The higher the sun travels, the smaller the arch.
This science blog says:
"Rainbows are formed by small water droplets in the air splitting the suns light into colours. Each colour has a consistent angle to the incoming light and so makes a circle (like a compass). Interestingly, the shadow of your head is always the centre of the circle, so unless our shadow heads overlap the rainbow you are looking at is always slightly different position to the rainbow I'm looking at. This is also why there is no "end of the rainbow": circles have no ends.
You can only see the whole circle if you're high enough to see over the curvature of the earth, the reason for this is that the position of the sun in the sky opposite to the rainbow formation site forms the central point of the circle which the rainbow outlines, with the rainbow itself being a circumference described around that point."
Wow.
Nature is truly mystical.
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| Photo taken from NOAA's P-3 Orion weather reseach aircraft. A rain shower beneath the aircraft allowed for view of the entire circle of the rainbow, although this 23-mm wide angle lens was not quite wide enough to capture the entire circle. Note: there is a separate optical phenomena, called a glory (caused by diffraction), surrounding the shadow of the airplane. - wunderground.com
Another fun fact: Full moons can create lunar rainbows when they're bright enough for raindrops to refract their light. This is a rare and surely beautiful occurrence. I'll check the interwebs for a good picture.
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