Pure luck I looked out the window in late afternoon at the right time and location to see a beautiful arching rainbow in the eastern sky.
Three minutes later, my first rainbow of 2026 was gone.
I remember learning about rainbows when I was in grade school, but needed a refresher. So I headed over to National Geographic where I learned how rainbows are formed:
The sun or other source of light is usually behind the person seeing the rainbow. In fact, the center of a primary rainbow is the antisolar point, the imaginary point exactly opposite the sun.
Rainbows are the result of the refraction and reflection of light. Both refraction and reflection are phenomena that involve a change in a wave’s direction.
A refracted wave may appear “bent,” while a reflected wave might seem to “bounce back” from a surface or other wavefront.
Light entering a water droplet is refracted. It is then reflected by the back of the droplet. As this reflected light leaves the droplet, it is refracted again, at multiple angles.
Have you seen any rainbows this year?
