Now I know that rainbows are formed due to refraction of light from the sun hitting raindrops and light waves leave at varying angles between 40-42 degrees or somewhere around there. Also, that they’re round.

What I don’t understand is how it’s consistent, like I assume it’s hitting many raindrops, but all these drops are in different places so why does it still form a nice circle. Furthermore, why isn’t the whole sky a rainbow if it’s raining and thus hitting all the drops. I suspect the angle of the sun is playing a part but I’m not a science man.

Please help me get this thought out of my head.

  • @morphballganon
    8•5 months ago

    It does fill the whole sky. You only see the arc because our eyes can only see a limited range of colors.

    • @[email protected]OP
      6•5 months ago

      Wait. So a bird for instance might see something different?

      Are there sections of the visible light spectrum we can see in the sky too that we can’t see because we are at the wrong angle? Like is that why we are always at the centre of the rainbow?

      I still don’t understand how it forms the whole ring though. Like I could understand a sliver of it, but not really grasping how it can span such a distance or if it’s from a particular drop or many drops.

      • Inductor
        8•5 months ago

        Here’s a circular rainbow from an aircraft a skydiver: img

        EDIT: image embedding didn’t work

        EDIT 2: not from a plane

        EDIT 3: sorry for all the edits, fixed image