A complete Rainbow… photo was taken at around 30k ft above the Earth. On the ground, we usually only see the arc half of the circle.
I’ve never seen that. had to reblog.
in the interests of correct information, but in no way throwing shade due to the many times i myself have been corrected over similar things, i feel i should let folks know that
the above image is not real, it’s just an image shared by a pilot named Lloyd J. Ferraro because he thought it was cool, and people assumed it was a photo he took, but he later clarified that it was not. It isn’t actually even a photograph.
at some point some tldr of a NASA caption on an actual photo got paired with the above image and went semi viral or whatever
What’s true:
Swiss photographer Lucas Moesch
did use a drone to take a photo featuring a circular rainbow, and here it is
Beautiful, right? NASA later featured this same photo on their website with this caption:
Have you ever seen an entire rainbow? From the ground, typically, only the top portion of a rainbow is visible because directions toward the ground have fewer raindrops. From the air, though, the entire 360-degree circle of a rainbow is more commonly visible. Pictured here, a full-circle rainbow was captured over the Lofoten Islands of Norway in September by a drone passing through a rain shower. An observer-dependent phenomenon primarily caused by the internal reflection of sunlight by raindrops, the rainbow has a full diameter of 84 degrees. The Sun is in the exact opposite direction from the rainbow’s center. As a bonus, a second rainbow that was more faint and color-reversed was visible outside the first.
but see up there in the NASA blurb where it says “
observer-dependent phenomenon”?
That just means you can only see it from a specific point of view/situation. But also, you can
always see it from that POV/sitch. No matter where you are, if your point of view is “backlit by the sun at the right angle with sufficient water droplets dispersed in the air” you will see a circular rainbow… even standing 10 toes deep right here on Planet Dirt.
which is why you can create one for yourself with a garden hose and a spray attachment on a sunny day
