First ever image of fourth-order rainbow

October 6, 2011 | Amateur Science, Science | By: Mark VandeWettering

Long time readers of my blog may remember that I’m interested in rainbows (not unicorns, just rainbows). A while ago, I wrote a simple simulation that showed the formation of the primary and secondary rainbows by simulating the refraction of water inside a single raindrop. These two bows appear opposite the sun in the sky. But I never thought to try to simulate the higher order rainbows (caused by greater numbers of refractions inside water drops) because, well, I didn’t think that they existed.

But they do. And this week the first known photos of them appeared.

Short Sharp Science: First ever image of fourth-order rainbow.

Unlike the primary and secondary bows, these are actually in the direction of the sun. Very cool. I bet that I could modify my old rainbow tracer to make pictures of these things. Perhaps if I get a few moments this weekend.

Comments

Comment from Patrick, DL5DSP
Time 10/7/2011 at 2:17 am

Oh, I was not aware that the are THAT rare. We also saw such from our office in Berlin last week. Not sure if one colleague was taking a photo. But they are real, not photoshopped.