I hadn’t realized that these had been observed before – none of my sources on rainbows or unusual atmospheric phenomena had mentioned that.
I used to talk to my students about these in my rainbow lectures.
I’m a bit surprised about all the “computer model” stuff – yiou don’t need that to predict the situations under which these ought to be visible – they’re obvious from the optics of the situation. I’ve stated them myself.
For the record, these were first observed in a laboratory situation by Qutb al din al Shirazi and his student Kamal al din al Firazi back in Persia in the 14th century. They used a glass globe full of water and sunlight coming in through a hole. Very shortly after that a French/German monk named Theodoric of Freibourg performed the same experiment, observing the primary and secondary rainbows, but not the tertiary or quarternary. See Boyer’s book on The Rainbow for details.
I mean, I’m not doubting it. But rainbows 1 and 2 not shown? Find a wide angle lens or something. I mean, if I showed someone a picture of the woods and said “look, it’s a picture of Bigfoot…'s lair. Bigfoot’s just a few feet over and I couldn’t photograph him but he was totally there growling and stuff.” you’d probably be a little skeptical, wouldn’t you?
Rainbows 1 and 2 aren’t shown because they’re behind the photographer. From the link, Tertiary (and Quarternary Rainbows) are on the same side of the sky as the sun.
Stupid question, Cal, would that mean that sundogs are tertiary rainbows? If so, I see them all the time in winter.
Another reason to not show the primary and secondary rainbows are that they’d be vastly different intensity, and you’d probably need a different exposure for them to show up. Sundogs, aka parhelia are completely different from rainbows – they’re ice crystal phenomena, caused by sunlight refracting through the non-adjacent faces of horiizontally-oriented hexagonal plates.
The aerofdynamics of the plates tend to make them fall flat, and so you only get two "images – one on each side of the sun. Often you’ll only get one, depending on where your crystals are. If the atmosphere is turbid enough, you’ll get a halo instead of just the spot.
The degree of separation of the colors (sundogs can be dull spot, bright sun-like objects, or glorious rainbow-like streaks) depends upon the size of the ice crystals.
(Some people say that the sundogs can be caused y ice needles. In principle they can, but every ice crystal harvest picture I’ve seen shows flat hexagonal plates, with some equilateral triangle plates sometimes mixed in.)
Yeah, I understand that fitting them both into one picture would be a challenge. I’m just saying what the heck is the point of an article talking about evidence of 4 rainbows and then show a picture of two rainbows? The photographer couldn’t turn around? The article couldn’t say “click here for rainbows 1 and 2”?
I mean, I don’t doubt that it’s all real. It just leaves a bit to be desired is all.
Mathematically speaking, those have to be the rainbows in question unless that’s a fake sun. Primary and secondary rainbows form at around 138 deg away from the sun, tertiary ones at 45 deg or so.
In other words, you’d need a multi-shot panorama to get them in the same picture.
There’s nothing at all special about rainbows 1 and 2, so there’s no point in photographing them. In fact, if there aren’t any raindrops in that direction there might not even BE primary and secondary rainbows. And, as Zeriel points out, the position of the sun would indicate that these must be the tertiary and quarternary rainbows.
Huh, I think I may have seen a tertiary rainbow with my mother when I was 10 or so. We investigated and decided it was a sundog (neither of us had heard of those either), but having later seen sundogs, this wasn’t the same thing.
Anyone know what’s up with the rainbows when you GIS for “tertiary rainbow”?
As I said above, sundogs vary very widely in appearance, from things that look like dim suns to barely-visible bright spots to flamboyant, rainbow-hued arcs trailing from red near the sun to blue away from it. It depends on how cloudy it is, and on the size of the ice crystals.
Tertiaray rainbows are pretty dim and require exttremely odd viewing circumstances.
At first I was all :dubious::dubious::dubious:. I mean, those are nice primary and secondary rainbows, but where’s #3 and # 4? Then I realized, those ARE #3 and #4, and they are amazingly clear and bright. It’s rare to get even a secondary rainbow that’s as complete and bright as number 4 there, let alone number 3.
My husband and I saw a triple rainbow once, in 1999 (in San Jose, CA). It was pretty memorable. I’ve always wondered what the conditions were that made that happen.