Ok, when you were a child or even an adult have you ever wondered why you cannot ever seem to reach the end of a rainbow?
Rainbows are formed when light reflects off droplets of water.
This causes the light to seperate into it’s original colours. For those of you who do not know, ‘plain’ light consists of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet light all combined together to form what we know as being white light. This process is called refraction and it basically reverse engineers light to it’s original colours and makes it visible. Now you know why you see the colours of the rainbow.
A rainbow does not actually exist at a specific point in the sky, it is the person looking at the rainbow which decides it’s apparent position and this is why it is always moving when you move, or at least until there is now more rain or the sky darkens.
So, now that we have established that you could never reach the end of a rainbow because it never has an end, let me tell you about rainbows.
If you want to see an amazing rainbow, you should go somewhere where there are rainclouds and it is still dark but the sun is starting to rise (dawn preferably). This would allow you to see for only a few minutes a spectacular rainbow, it’s colours would be very rich and vivid as it is contrasted to a dark background.
On some very rare occasions, most commonly in Alaska, moonbows can be seen. This is an incredibly rare phenomena that usually only occurs a few times every year as it needs rain and a very bright moon. This does not mean a clear sky, it actually involves the position of the earth on it’s axis of rotation and how close it is too the moon before a clear sky is even taken into account.
If you were to rent an airplane and be lucky enough to see a rainbow from the sky, you would see a complete circle. This is because you are looking directly onto the light and water droplets instead of looking at them from an angle which only allows you to see half of the rainbow.
So, that’s it! I’m all done with rainbows.. for now anyway. I would have made this a lengthier article but i tried doing some research on the science behind rainbows.. My head felt like it was going to explode, it is very complicated!
Anyway, i hope you have enjoyed this article and maybe it has helped to enlighten you as to the whereabouts of the end of a rainbow. Nowhere.
*Just incase you haven’t figured out that there is no pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, purely because there is no end to a rainbow !