Saturday 20 August 2016

Tiny rainbow in Grasmere


This tiny rainbow caught our attention. Technically, rainbows are a full circle based around what is called the anti-solar point. You get to the anti-solar point by following a line from the Sun down through you and into the Earth beneath. Keep going until you are as far below ground as the Sun appears to be above ground. So in summer, when the Sun is higher in the sky, the anti-solar point will be deeper underground and the section of a rainbow visible above ground will be smaller. Even so, I was surprised by how small this was! It was only about 10am BST so if we had waited 3 hours until noon GMT then presumably it would have been even smaller! Thanks to Paul for taking the pictures.