Red Bows
When the sun is low in the horizon, early or late in the day, a rainbow can be limited to reds and yellows.
Some Rainbows Don’t Have Every Color of the Rainbow
There are at least 12 kinds of rainbows, a new study reveals, and some skip a color or two.
SAN FRANCISCO At sunrise and sunset, only ROY shows up for rainbow duty—G and BIV don’t appear for the earliest and latest color shows in the sky. Rainbows, it seems, are far more complex than the simple mnemonic for the colors of the rainbow that we all learned as children.
Inspired by the rainbow of rainbows, atmospheric scientist Jean Ricard has created a new rainbow classification scheme, which he presents Friday at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
While creating such a system may seem like a frivolous endeavor, it could help people to look beyond what they expect to find and “challenge our understanding of rainbows,” said Ricard, of France's National Centre for Meteorological Research, at a press conference
