Picture of the Day: A Horizon Rainbow in Paris
11 years ago - April 02, 2013
Have you ever seen a horizon rainbow before? This fascinating phenomenon was recently captured by photographerBertrand Kulik in Paris, France. According to Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell of NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day(APOD):
“What is pictured above is actually just a common rainbow. It’s uncommon appearance is caused by the Sun being unusually high in the sky during the rainbow’s creation. Since every rainbow’s center must be exactly opposite the Sun, a high Sun reflecting off of a distant rain will produce a low rainbow where only the very top is visible — because the rest of the rainbow is below the horizon.
Furthermore, no two observers can see exactly the same rainbow — every person finds themselves exactly between the Sun and rainbow’s center, and every observer sees the colorful circular band precisely 42 degrees from rainbow’s center.”
