When I received a telephone call from overseas telling me that my father had died, I was on the twelfth floor of a hotel, thousands of miles away from him. I hung up the telephone, walked to the window and stood looking out at the city. There was a massive rainbow that arced over the building, more vivid than any I have ever seen.
I was sorely tempted to weave its presence into some sort of meaning about my father's death. Only he and I had an agreement. We both loved a mackerel sky, a sky that looks like the scales of a fish or the scaling of sand on the ocean floor.
So I laughed at the thought that if there was a god, aside from a lot of other issues I could take up with him, he'd got the special effects wrong.
But then when I got into junior high school kids started making fun of me. Puppets were baby toys and the fact my hero Jim Henson managed to make a good living at it was irrelevant. Then I found out that a rainbow was actually a symbol for homosexuality. Needless to say I was a little embarrassed. This mighta worked if I were actually gay, but I'm not so it just made me feel like an idiot. I guess we could have just changed the name of the company, but my Dad already invested money in T-shirts for all of us. By the time I got into high school I was just too busy for it, and my parents eventually dropped it. I still kinda miss it though. It was fun, and for awhile there it looked like I was going to be able to turn it into a career. I wonder what woulda happened if I stuck with it?
Rainbow Rainbows are caused by light bouncing once off the insides of raindrops; the colours occur because different colours (wavelengths) of light are refracted by different amounts. Double Rainbow Many rainbows have a double on the outside, with the colours the opposite way round from the main bow. This is caused by light bouncing around the inside of water droplets twice. A third bow, caused by light bouncing three times, is easily seen in the lab but almost never in the sky. Supernumerary Rainbow Occasionally a rainbow has many extra bands of colour close together on the inside. These supernumerary bows show the interference pattern created by light waves leaving droplets; their visibility depends on how uniformly sized the droplets are. 22º Halo A coloured ring around the sun, caused by refraction from a cirrostratus. 46º Halo Like the 22º Halo only bigger, weaker and much rarer. Sun Dogs Patches of rainbow at the same elevation as the sun, on top of or just outside the 22º halo depending on how high the sun is in the sky. These are the result of refraction by horizontally-aligned plate-like ice crystals in cirrus clouds. Most of the time they come in pairs, with one either side of the sun. Circumzenith Arc A rainbow-arc partway around the zenith of the sky, among the most spectacular of all aerial spectra. These are produced by the same kind of ice crystals as sun dogs, and are therefore likely to occur at around the same time. Corona A coloured ring pretty close to the sun or moon, caused by diffraction from water droplets in an altostratus or altocumulus layer. Droplets of different sizes give different-sized coronas, so the effect is smeared out if the sizes of the droplets vary too much. Although beautiful and common, the corona around the sun is usually much too bright to look at, which is why most people have never even noticed it. The night-time version, around the moon, is much less interesting thanks to the narrower spread of wavelengths in moonlight and our reduced sensitivity to colours at low light levels. Warning: Do not try to look for bright colours in the clouds immediately surrounding the sun without proper sunglasses! Even with strong shades, take great care not to look for too long at a time, and block the sun out of your view.
Rainbow Rainbows are caused by light bouncing once off the insides of raindrops; the colours occur because different colours (wavelengths) of light are refracted by different amounts.
Double Rainbow Many rainbows have a double on the outside, with the colours the opposite way round from the main bow. This is caused by light bouncing around the inside of water droplets twice. A third bow, caused by light bouncing three times, is easily seen in the lab but almost never in the sky.
Supernumerary Rainbow Occasionally a rainbow has many extra bands of colour close together on the inside. These supernumerary bows show the interference pattern created by light waves leaving droplets; their visibility depends on how uniformly sized the droplets are.
22º Halo A coloured ring around the sun, caused by refraction from a cirrostratus.
46º Halo Like the 22º Halo only bigger, weaker and much rarer.
Sun Dogs Patches of rainbow at the same elevation as the sun, on top of or just outside the 22º halo depending on how high the sun is in the sky. These are the result of refraction by horizontally-aligned plate-like ice crystals in cirrus clouds. Most of the time they come in pairs, with one either side of the sun.
Circumzenith Arc A rainbow-arc partway around the zenith of the sky, among the most spectacular of all aerial spectra. These are produced by the same kind of ice crystals as sun dogs, and are therefore likely to occur at around the same time.
Corona A coloured ring pretty close to the sun or moon, caused by diffraction from water droplets in an altostratus or altocumulus layer. Droplets of different sizes give different-sized coronas, so the effect is smeared out if the sizes of the droplets vary too much. Although beautiful and common, the corona around the sun is usually much too bright to look at, which is why most people have never even noticed it. The night-time version, around the moon, is much less interesting thanks to the narrower spread of wavelengths in moonlight and our reduced sensitivity to colours at low light levels.
Warning: Do not try to look for bright colours in the clouds immediately surrounding the sun without proper sunglasses! Even with strong shades, take great care not to look for too long at a time, and block the sun out of your view.
For more information visit:
www.cloudman.org www.bbc.co.uk/weather www.sundog.clara.co.uk/atoptics/phenom.htm
Or read:
The Flying Circus of Physics, by Jearl Walker Weather Watching, by Mary & John Gribbin
I've never seen the green flash, nor the red tide, but I have been inside a rainbow. It's quite something.
I didn't think it was possible to get to the end of the rainbow. Usually, as one moves toward it, it recedes; it's always over the next hill or behind those trees... that's the point, right? That's why the leprechaun's treasure is so elusive...
Well, it was a few years ago, spring, a rainy day in Mathews, Virginia. It was one of those days when the dark clouds and sky serve as a dramatic backdrop for bright areas of sunshine; where random growth by the side of the road looks like technicolor plants from The Wizard of Oz. The road was so wet it was reflecting light. I kept driving through rain showers and then patches of sunshine that had a very misty quality, because of the high humidity. I was watching the rainbow, and was surprised to see that we seemed to be getting closer to it.
We rounded a bend in the road, and suddenly we were inside the rainbow. I could see colors in the water vapor in the air all around us; green and yellow and orange were the clearest, but shades of red, blue, and violet were also visible. It was kind of like looking through a translucent, colored filter, but the effect was (of course) three-dimensional.
The most amazing thing was that the phenomenon lasted--we must have been inside the rainbow for a good three-tenths of a mile.
Rainbow's style and lineup changed considerably during its eight years together. They started as an epic heavy metal band, complete with fantasy lyrics, but by 1979, Blackmore wanted to move towards a more mainstream, commercialized, hard rock sound. This upset Dio enough that he left the band to join Black Sabbath.
Unfortunately, efforts to make the band's music more commercialized failed, and sales of 1979's Down to Earth were poor, although later albums were more successful. By 1982, however, the band was unappealing and no longer sounded as fresh and inventive as it had during its heyday, and in 1984, Rainbow broke up.
Members of Rainbow: Ritchie Blackmore Ronnie James Dio Craig Gruber Gary Driscoll Mickey Lee Soule Jimmy Bain Cozy Powell Tony Carey Matt Clark Bob Daisley Roger Glover David Stone
Discography: Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow Rainbow Radio Special Rainbow Rising On Stage Long Live Rock and Roll Down to Earth Difficult to Cure Straight Between the Eyes Bent Out of Shape Rainbow Mania
Sources: http://ubl.artistdirect.com/music/artist/bio/0,,482486,00.html?artist=Rainbow http://store.artistdirect.com/store/artist/album/full/0,,482486,00.html?artist=Rainbow http://www.dio.net/biography/Rainbow.html
Rain"bow` (?), n. [AS. regenboga, akin to G. regenbogen. See Rain, and Bow anything bent,]
A bow or arch exhibiting, in concentric bands, the several colors of the spectrum, and formed in the part of the hemisphere opposite to the sun by the refraction and reflection of the sun's rays in drops of falling rain.
⇒ Besides the ordinary bow, called also primary rainbow, which is formed by two refractions and one reflection, there is also another often seen exterior to it, called the secondary rainbow, concentric with the first, and separated from it by a small interval. It is formed by two refractions and two reflections, is much fainter than the primary bow, and has its colors arranged in the reverse order from those of the latter.
Lunar rainbow, a fainter arch or rainbow, formed by the moon. -- Marine rainbow, ∨ Sea bow, a similar bow seen in the spray of waves at sea. -- Rainbow trout Zool., a bright-colored trout (Salmoirideus), native of the mountains of California, but now extensively introduced into the Eastern States. Japan, and other countries; -- called also brook trout, mountain trout, and golden trout. -- Rainbow wrasse. Zool. See under Wrasse. -- Supernumerary rainbow, a smaller bow, usually of red and green colors only, sometimes seen within the primary or without the secondary rainbow, and in contact with them.
© Webster 1913.
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