Rain and rainbows in ED

[maxxi]

Good to have a drop of rain - better to have a bonus like this

[Ridgley]

There was a lovely rainbow across Peckham Rye Park.

[????]

Looked like the Pot of Gold was in Nunhead.....and that can't be right

[DulwichFox]

Rainbows do not have ends....Full Circle Bows

In the song "Moon River," Georgia songwriter Johnny Mercer wrote, "We're after the same rainbow's end." Actually, though, rainbows have no end. We usually don't see the full circle because the horizon of the Earth is in the way.

But if the sun is very low in the sky, either just before sunset or just after sunrise, we can see a half circle. The higher the sun is in the sky, the less we see of the rainbow.

The only way to see the full circle of a rainbow in the sky is to be above the raindrops and have the sun behind you. You would have to look down on the drops from an airplane.

Source>>> Here

[mockney piers]

I took this one a couple of years ago

 

[DulwichFox]

mockney piers Wrote:

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> I took this one a couple of years ago

>

Nice Pic. Not a Rainbow. This is a Halo.

How to see a halo

As any avid sky watcher knows, there are many other examples of color in the sky. Have you ever seen a single ring of color around the sun or moon? It is a halo, and it occurs more frequently than a rainbow.

To see a halo, don't look directly into the sun. Instead, block the sun from your view with your hand, a car visor or other object so you can just see the clouds around it. Sunglasses also may help you see a halo -- but even with sunglasses, you'll need to block the sun from your eyes.

Sometimes the halo is white. Sometimes you can see red and orange in the middle, with yellow and blue at the outer edges.

A 22-degree halo is the most common. It is formed when light refracts -- or bends -- around the edges of long ice crystals at a 22-degree angle.

If a thin cloud's ice crystals are in the right position, you might see arcs just above or below the halo. The arcs form when light refracts inside long pencil-shaped ice crystals.

Flat ice crystals can produce an effect high above the halo called a circumzenithal arc -- or an upside-down rainbow.

Also when light refracts through flat horizontal ice crystals, you might see bright spots of light along the right and left sides of a halo. These bright spots are commonly called sun dogs; their scientific name is parhelia.

Coronas

Fox

[mockney piers]

If you click the link through you'll see the photo is indeed entitled corona, but it is in effect a circular rainbow.

Same thing really, as the light is diffracted through the moisture laden air in the same way as through rain.

It was in the tropics (Guatemala) on a hot humid day with added thin low cloud.