Yes, but can your rainbow do this? After the remnants of
Hurricane Florence passed over the Jersey Shore,
New Jersey,
USA in 2018,
the Sun came out in one direction but something quite unusual appeared in the opposite direction: a
hall of
rainbows. Over the course of the next half hour, to the delight of the photographer and his daughter, vibrant
supernumerary rainbows faded in and out, with at least
five captured in
this featured single shot.
Supernumerary rainbows only form when falling
water droplets are all nearly the same size and typically less than a millimeter across. Then, sunlight will not only reflect from inside the raindrops, but
interfere, a wave phenomenon similar to
ripples on a pond when a stone is thrown in. In fact,
supernumerary rainbows can
only be explained with waves, and their noted existence in the early 1800s was considered early evidence of
light's wave nature.