Rainbow magic
"The next time you see a rainbow, look carefully at the colors. There's red on the outside, then orange, yellow, green and, finally, on the inside, blue. That's how a rainbow stops, on blue...
[Hmph. It's obvious that this rainbow and most others go to violet, but let the scientist go on...]
"Except this rainbow, photographed March 28th by Vincent Jacques of Menton, France, kept going -- blue, green, blue, green, blue, green.
"Atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley explains: 'The extra bows just inside the primary rainbow are called supernumeraries. They were so named because 17th century theories of the rainbow could not explain them -- they were thought of as extras and not supposed to exist! Supernumeraries are produced by the interference between light waves. Nowadays, they tell us that the raindrops are small.
"'Want to make your own clear and sharp supernumeraries? Look at the rainbow in the fine spray of a garden hose.'"
From Spaceweather
[Hmph. It's obvious that this rainbow and most others go to violet, but let the scientist go on...]
"Except this rainbow, photographed March 28th by Vincent Jacques of Menton, France, kept going -- blue, green, blue, green, blue, green.
"Atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley explains: 'The extra bows just inside the primary rainbow are called supernumeraries. They were so named because 17th century theories of the rainbow could not explain them -- they were thought of as extras and not supposed to exist! Supernumeraries are produced by the interference between light waves. Nowadays, they tell us that the raindrops are small.
"'Want to make your own clear and sharp supernumeraries? Look at the rainbow in the fine spray of a garden hose.'"
From Spaceweather
Rainbow magic
mr damon, 05:23
1 Comments:
I saw supernumeraries on a huge rainbow over Chicago last week. Instead of blue and green, it was several dim repeats of blue and violet.
The rainbow itself was incredibly sharp, occurring behind a dark storm about an hour before sunset. The entire arc was visible, with a second, fainter echo further out. For awhile, there were the barest traces of additional arcs well inside the main rainbow -- too far away to be supernumeraries, but not quite bright enough to be another bow.
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