Where Do the Rainbows in the Sky Come From?

Pace, 2015.

“Blessed are the peacemakers:
for they shall be called the children of God.”
—Matthew 5:9

Rainbows are multicolored arcs that appear when sunlight illuminates little drops of airborne water. They can be seen when sunlight from behind an observer illuminates water droplets in front. After a sunbeam enters a water droplet, it hits the back of the droplet and is partly reflected. Due to their different wavelengths, the different colors of the sunbeam exit the water droplet at different angles and a rainbow appears. The colors of a rainbow show the visible color spectrum of sunlight from violet in the inner ring to red in the outer ring. The second arc of a double rainbow shows the colors reversed.

Rainbows are optical illusions and not objects with a distinct location. The sun, the water droplets, and the observer must be in a specific lineup for a rainbow to be seen. Different observers will see different rainbows depending on their location.