Reflected rainbow, reflection rainbow

A special rainbow may appear when a rainbow is seen above a body of water,if the water surface is calm and flat. A reflected rainbow will appear as a mirror im age below. The sunlight is first deflected by the raindrops, and then reflected off the body of water, before reaching the on looker. The reflected rainbow is frequently visible in puddles. Where sunlight reflects off a body off water before reaching the raindrops, it may produce a reflection rainbow. The reflection rainbow appears over the horizon. It intersects the origional rainbow at the horizon, and its arc reaches higher in the sky. Reflection rainbows are not commonly visable.

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Supernumerary rainbows

A supernumerary rainbow is an infrequent phenomenon, consiting of several faint rainbows on the inner side of the primary rainbow,and also very rarely also outside the secondary rainbow. Supernumerary rainbows are slightly detachted and have pastel coluor bands that do not fit the usual pattern. It is not possible to explain there exsistance using classical geometric optics.

The altenating faint rainbows caused by interfearance between rays of light following slightyly differeant paths with slightly varying lenghts within the

raindrops.

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Scientific explanation

The light is first refracted as it enters the surface of the raindrop,reflected of the back of the drop,and again refracted as it leaves the drop. The overall effect is that the incoming light is reflected back over a wide range of angles, with the most intense light at an angle of 40-42 degrees. The angle is independant on the size of the drop, but does not depend on its rafractive index. Seawater has higher refractive index than rain water, so the radius of a 'rainbow' in sea spray is smaller than a true rainbow. This is visible to the nacked eye by a misalignment of these bows. The amount by which light is refracted depends upon its wavelenght,and hence its colour. Blue light is refracted at a greater angle than red light, but because the area of the back of the droplet has a focal point inside the droplet , the spectrum crosses itself, and therefore the red light appears higher in the sky, and forms the outer colour of the rainbow.

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Visibility

Rainbows can be seen whenever there are water drops in the air and sunlight shining from behind a oerson at a low altitude.

The rainbow effect is also commonly seen near waterfalls or fountains.The effects can also be artificially created by dispersing water droplets into the air during a sunny day. Rarely,a moonbow,lunar rainbow or night-time rainbow,can be seen on strongly moonlit nights.As human visual preception for color is poor in low light,moonbows are often perceived to be white.It's difficult to photograph the complete arc of a rainbow,as this would require an angle of view of 84 degrees. From an aeroplane,one has the oppertunity to see the whole circle of the rainbow,with the planes shadow in the centre. This phenomenon can be confused with the glory,but a glory is usually much smaller,covering only 5-20 degrees.www.gymhol.cz/.../fyzika/03_disperze/Moonbow.jpg

The Colours

A rainbow sapans a continuous spectrum of colours. Traditionally,however, the sequences is quantised .The most commonly sited and remembered sequence is red,orange,yellow,green,blue,indigo and violet.
Rainbows can be caused by other forms of water than rain including spray,fog,mist,dew and ice.

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Rainbow

a rainbow is an optical and meteorological phenomenon that causes a spectrum of light to appear in the sky when the sun shines onto droplets of moisture in the Earth's atmosphere.They take the form of a multicoloured arc,with red on the outer part of the arch and violet on the inner section of the arch. More rarely,a secondary rainbow is seen,which is a second lighter arch outside the original arch with colours in the opposite order,that is violet on the outside and red on the inside.