Quadruple Rainbow Photographed for First Time

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Forget the double rainbow. This year, the quadruple rainbow is all the rage.

A new photograph shows the first-ever evidence of an elusive fourth-order rainbow.

Few people have ever claimed to see even three rainbows in the sky at once. Scientific reports of these phenomena, called tertiary rainbows, were so rare - only five were reported in 250 years - that until now many scientists believed they were as real as a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

These legendary optical rarities, caused by three reflections of each light ray within a raindrop, have finally been confirmed, thanks to photographic perseverance and a new meteorological model that provides the scientific underpinnings to find them. The work is described in a series of papers in a special issue published this week in the journal Applied Optics.

The optical treasure hunt even went one step further, as revealed in the photo that shows the shimmering trace of a fourth rainbow.

Screw this little dinky picture, I would like the full size high-res image of this.

I can sort of see it on the picture, but when you have a picture that is 21kb, your losing a little bit of quality and sharpness.

Cool to see though and interesting that there have only been 5 reported in 250 years. This photo is going to be worth quite a bit.

Any thoughts?

Pred...

reply to post by predator0187


Where's double rainbow dude when you need him?





I think his head would've exploded if he saw the quadruple model.

What a lot of people dont realize about rainbows is that they are actually a circle its just the ground gets in the way so we only ever see the top part.

reply to post by FortAnthem


Haha, that was awesome.

Must have been inspiration for this...

reply to post by PhoenixOD


No, there is a pot of gold at each end. My mom's friends sister said someone at her church knew a guy that saw it!

That person wouldn't lie.

quadruple?
OK could some one point out all 4 for me? I can just barley see 2. I even downloaded the picture and enlarged it and inverted the colors trying to find all 4 and I can still only see 2

That's the rainbow serpent

Looks like a double rainbow to me and I just took pictures of one a month ago.