The seventh and eighth grade students were outside running relay races. I was working at my desk in the teachers' room when one of the P.E. instructors came inside and made an excited announcement. A commotion ensued amongst the other teachers, then everyone rushed to look out the window. So of course I did the same...and looked up to see the craziest rainbow ever:
It is not easy to take good photos of a rainbow that is circling the sun. But yes, there was a giant, full-circle rainbow ring around the sun. I knew that all rainbows are technically full circles (people just don't typically see the full circle because the horizon is in the way), but still, this was wild!
When I looked into this phenomenon online, I found that what I saw was most likely a "halo" and not a rainbow, since full-circle rainbows can only be seen from very high elevations (such as from an airplane; a person would have to be above the rain, with the sun behind him/her to see a rainbow), and since the colors were "backwards" (red was on the inside of the bend, a characteristic of halos; red is on the outside of rainbows...unless there's a double rainbow, in which case the second rainbow's colors will be backwards, like a halo's). Ah, science.
I heard from a friend that this rainbow/halo/whatever-it-was had been covered on the Shizuoka news. Apparently such a sighting is rare, so this really was a big deal! I'm glad to have seen it firsthand.
It is not easy to take good photos of a rainbow that is circling the sun. But yes, there was a giant, full-circle rainbow ring around the sun. I knew that all rainbows are technically full circles (people just don't typically see the full circle because the horizon is in the way), but still, this was wild!
When I looked into this phenomenon online, I found that what I saw was most likely a "halo" and not a rainbow, since full-circle rainbows can only be seen from very high elevations (such as from an airplane; a person would have to be above the rain, with the sun behind him/her to see a rainbow), and since the colors were "backwards" (red was on the inside of the bend, a characteristic of halos; red is on the outside of rainbows...unless there's a double rainbow, in which case the second rainbow's colors will be backwards, like a halo's). Ah, science.
I heard from a friend that this rainbow/halo/whatever-it-was had been covered on the Shizuoka news. Apparently such a sighting is rare, so this really was a big deal! I'm glad to have seen it firsthand.
No comments:
Post a Comment