Sometimes We Need To Look for the Rainbow

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There has been lot's of fog, ice and the usual winter weather but a couple days ago, we had a brief break and this photo I'm sharing is a rainbow that came over the river behind my son's house. It reminds me there is beautiful and something to be thankful for no matter how gray things are. I read long ago in a National Geographic magazine that rainbows are made by light striking water. The colors are always in order of the wavelength from longest to shortest. How we see them depend where we are and where the sun is. Light entering are refracted and then reflected on the water drops. They are full circles but we see them as an arch and think they have ends. The other day, this rainbow I'm sharing in the photo was seen by my son and I but a friend just a mile away only saw what appeared to be a straight line. It depends where your horizon is. There is so much scientific info about rainbows of the hows and whys. Too many for me to list here. Most of us know rainbows as red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple but before purple, there is a color called indigo but looks blue. Sometimes, you can see double rainbows. This is light reflected inside the same raindrop. It will reverse the colors. There are other types of rainbows like quaternary and tertiary which face the sun and harder to see. One could take a whole semester class learning the different types of rainbows and how they are made.