A rainbow in the sky is often a sign of hope and beauty. It appears after the rain and can often appear while it is raining as long as the sun is shining as well. When you see a rainbow, you’re seeing multiple colors that are bent due to a reflection of the rays of the sun inside raindrops.
Colors
There are a few main colors to a rainbow. These include red, yellow, green, blue, orange, indigo, and violet. Aside from these main colors, a rainbow is comprised of several colors that you usually can’t see unless you’re right next to a rainbow. Some of the shades in a rainbow are colors that you might not have seen before. The colors that you see might be different than the colors that someone else sees as your vision refracts light in different ways.
Isaac Newton
If you want to learn about rainbows, then look mo further than Sir Isaac Newton. When he saw sunlight shining on a prism and the colors that appeared, he named the colors those that are in a rainbow. When he named the colors, he wanted to include seven instead of six with indigo being the seventh color because he was a religious person. It’s also notable that the Greek goddess of the Rainbow is Iris.
Different views
As soon as you see a rainbow, you likely see various colors that are in the shape of a curve or an arc. Someone else who is standing in another location might see a partial rainbow or might see different colors. When you see a rainbow, the sun is usually behind you and is reflecting in the raindrops that are opposite the sun’s rays. You can see a rainbow in the morning when there’s dew on the ground or in the air. Sometimes, you can see a rainbow in the spray at the ocean as long as the sun is shining enough to reflect in the droplets of water.
Old details
There is an old folklore that if someone walks under a rainbow, then that person’s gender will be changed. You’ve likely heard about a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. This detail came from Europe and involves angels putting gold at one end of a rainbow so that a nude man could find the pot and claim the gold. For many people, a rainbow is a symbol of peace.
You can try as many times as you want and probably still not see a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. It’s sometimes difficult to even find the end of a rainbow unless you’re right there at it because of how quickly a rainbow can disappear. While you’re moving, the end of a rainbow moves as well because your eyes reflect the light that you see. An interesting detail is that you can sometimes see rainbows at night. A moonbow can be seen when the light from the moon is very bright. You’ll usually see this light during a full moon. It also needs to be raining directly across from the moon. This is a sight that is quite rare and should be photographed when seen because you might not see it again unless conditions are just right.
If you’re in a plane, the arc that you see from the ground is usually a complete circle of color. There have been several pictures taken of rainbows and paintings made of rainbows because of their simplicity and beauty. On some occasions, you could see a double or a triple rainbow in the sky depending on the sun’s rays and the amount of moisture in the sky.
