What kind of rainbow trails a shadow behind it?
January 2, 2019 12:49 AM Subscribe
When flying from Helsinki to Reykjavík on New Year’s Eve I saw a rainbow from the plane, but what was strange about it is that it “trailed” a shadow that started inside the rainbow and extended as far backwards (according to the direction of the plane) as I could see. Here are photos and a video. I saw it for at least 15 minutes, while the clouds where uniformly gray and flat. Once the plane got over different clouds, I stopped seeing the rainbow and shadow. What was this optical phenomenon?
You frequently see the glory from planes.
posted by turkeyphant at 1:34 AM on January 2, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by turkeyphant at 1:34 AM on January 2, 2019 [1 favorite]
Best answer: And that's the shadow of your plane's contrail.
posted by ellenaim at 1:53 AM on January 2, 2019 [6 favorites]
posted by ellenaim at 1:53 AM on January 2, 2019 [6 favorites]
Response by poster: Of course! The contrail! Thank you, ellenaim!
posted by Kattullus at 2:26 AM on January 2, 2019
posted by Kattullus at 2:26 AM on January 2, 2019
Wikipedia has a nice explanation of the "glory" rainbow phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glory_(optical_phenomenon)
posted by exogenous at 4:57 AM on January 2, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by exogenous at 4:57 AM on January 2, 2019 [1 favorite]
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posted by aws17576 at 1:25 AM on January 2, 2019 [1 favorite]