Wednesday, 17 September 2008
UK gets upside down rainbow
I have never seen one of these,
FREAK atmospheric conditions form a rare UPSIDE DOWN rainbow over Britain.
The phenomenon, rarely seen outside polar regions, was spotted by astronomer Dr Jacqueline Mitton, 60, near her home in Cambridge.
Rainbows are caused by light penetrating raindrops.
But the inverted type, called a circumzenithal arc, happens when sunlight bounces off ice crystals high in the atmosphere sending the rays back up.
Dr Mitton said: “It was amazing.”
Aha, I can go another on that. About 5 years ago I witnessed a CIRCULAR rainbow around the Sun in Brunei. I DID take photographs which showed it very well but they are on a USB hard drive I need to extract the data from. If I succeed in extracting the picture I will send to you.
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