Great Bow here this evening!

Thanks guys! It was a hastily grabbed shot as I wasn't sure if it would last. The camera was setup for astrophotography so I quickly turned down the ISO and stuck it on Aperture Priority. Now this was wrong as what I'd normally do is take some meter readings and settle on a fixed manual exposure - the automatic has resulted in 2/3rds stop variation over the four used to stitch up.

Camera was my Minolta Dynax 5D, 28-135 lens at 28mm f8, ISO 100 shutter speeds between 1/500th-1/800th.

Clear skies,

Paul.

The light in a rainbow is polarised. As you go round the circle the angle of polarisation changes. The bits that are closer to 90 degrees polarised with respect to your glasses will be almost invisible.

That make sense?

Bart.

Cool. I was thinking it was something along those lines alright. Good to have it confirmed.
Cheers,

Best rainbow image I have ever seen.

The dark lane between the bows is fascinating.
It looks like a bridge.

It brings to mind “BIFROST”, he rainbow bridge between the Earthly realm and Valhalla.
Along Bifrost Valkerie maidens rode down to Earth and collected slain Viking heros to bring them to meet Odin,Thor and Fria in Valhalla.
(To the music of Wagner, of course.)

Bifrost will be destroyed in "Ragnorak", the final Norse battle which will end the world.

Hopefully, rainbows will be with us until the end of the world!

Peter.

What a superb image Paul -- congratulations!

Atmospheric optics is one of my favourite aspects of the hobby and I have written a couple of articles on the subject for EAAS. There is another installment in the pipeline.

The articles are at at ...

www.eaas.co.uk/news/atmospheric_optics_1.html (rainbows)

and

www.eaas.co.uk/news/atmospheric_optics_2.html (halo phenomena)

Both articles have extensive links and details of books on atmospheric optics.

Peter, it's nice you have that note about Bifrost. The dark band is known as Alexander's Dark Band after a Greek philosopher who described the phenomenon almost 2,000 years ago.

All the best,

John

Paul, yet another wonderful shot.
Do indeed send it to Spaceweather!