Thursday, February 11, 2010

Awesome Photo of the Day: a Nighttime Rainbow in Hawaii

Click here (or here) and be amazed. The "star" you see is actually Mars. Via Neatorama.

Here comes the science as noted in the news story:
... that band of colours is, in reality, a moonbow. Like a rainbow, its daylight equivalent, a moonbow is produced when light is broken up into its constituent colours as it passes through water droplets. In both cases, the source of light is the same: the Sun. In the case of the rainbow, sunlight produces its effect directly. In the case of the moonbow, however, that sunlight is first reflected off the surface of the moon and then shines back down to Earth.
Gorgeous.

RELATED POST: Previous rainbow awesomeness here.

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