Strange Rainbow

cletus

Saw a beautiful double rainbow the other night and managed to grab a pic or two of it:




As I was taking the pic I noticed that the sky inside the inner rainbow seemed to have a warmer hue to it than the sky outside. I have never seen (or at least I've never noticed) that before. I posted this pic to the FB page of a local meteorologist and asked what might cause this. His response:

The warmer hues as you call them, are closer to the horizon. Think about any sunset on any day. What color is the sky closest to the ground? More the warm shades, and the darker colors of night are higher up. Now put your two rainbows infront and voila! The same effect.

That would make sense if I was facing the sunset, but I was facing almost due east when I took this. Wouldn't the sky be darker and have cooler hues (more blue than pink and orange) lower in the sky when facing away from the sunset?

One other thing the meteorologist pointed out:

Also interesting to note that the colors on the 2nd rainbow are opposite in order. Instead of Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet - you have violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red!

I'm thinking both of these phenomenon had something to do with the fact that almost all the light was bouncing off of the anvil of the thunderstorm that had just passed through. Here is a pic looking west towards the sunset:



Anyone seen anything like this? Sign of the End Times? Am I just crazy?

Art Scott

That 1st pick is great.....almost a double rainbow......rainbow and a 1/2 at least.
just wish the power lines weren't there......I am sure you do also....
The 2nd image is also awesome.....love the sky.

Angelo

looks like a huge dome encapsulating the towm. maybe it's a "cone of silence"

cletus

Art Scott wrote: »

That 1st pick is great.....almost a double rainbow......rainbow and a 1/2 at least.
just wish the power lines weren't there......I am sure you do also....
The 2nd image is also awesome.....love the sky.

Thanks, Art. These were more "Hey look at that!" type pictures than serious worry about foreground and properly compose shots. It would have been fun to try and and get somewhere with better foregrounds and no power lines but I didn't really have the chance.

Angelo wrote:

looks like a huge dome encapsulating the towm. maybe it's a "cone of silence"

Hmmm. You might have something there. I haven't heard from anyone who lives in Blue Springs (next town in that direction) in a few days :uhoh