April 22, 2015: Quadruple rainbow

[Undertoad]

A Long Island commuter snapped this photo of a quadruple rainbow yesterday morning and it has made all the social media. It turns out the quad is actually two doubles at the same time.

Quadruple RAINBOW! What does this MEAN?

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

What does this MEAN?

LOL. That poor guy. It's good for him that he remains anonymous.

Edit: Semi-anonymous

[xoxoxoBruce]

I can tell from the 11th pixel in the 55th row where his children go to Sunday school.

[Gravdigr]

?

[glatt]

What does it MEAN?

[Gravdigr]

If that was for me, thanks, but, I was confused by Bruce's post about the pixels, and the rows, and the things at the place.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Never mind. I was mimicking the assholes who claim they can tell everything about a photo and it's history from examining the pixels.

[footfootfoot]

Or was the quad rainbow the result of reflections between the two panes in the window?

[glatt]

Yeah. I don't see how a quad rainbow could exist without the rings being concentric.

This is two double rainbows that are offset. Only a rain shower on Tatooine would produce that.

[glatt]

Turns out I'm wrong.

In August 2012, research scientist Dr. Wojciech Jarosz at Disney Research, Zürich, discovered, “Sometimes two rain showers combine. When the two are composed of different sized raindrops, each set of raindrops produces slightly deformed rainbows, which combine to form the elusive twinned rainbow.”

and

When a rainbow appears above a body of water, two complementary mirror bows may be seen below and above the horizon, originating from different light paths. Their names are slightly different.

A reflected rainbow may appear in the water surface below the horizon.[32] The sunlight is first deflected by the raindrops, and then reflected off the body of water, before reaching the observer. The reflected rainbow is frequently visible, at least partially, even in small puddles.

A reflection rainbow may be produced where sunlight reflects off a body of water before reaching the raindrops (see diagram and [1] ), if the water body is large, quiet over its entire surface, and close to the rain curtain. The reflection rainbow appears above the horizon. It intersects the normal rainbow at the horizon, and its arc reaches higher in the sky, with its centre as high above the horizon as the normal rainbow's centre is below it. Due to the combination of requirements, a reflection rainbow is rarely visible.

Six (or even eight) bows may be distinguished if the reflection of the reflection bow, and the secondary bow with its reflections happen to appear simultaneously.[33][34]

[footfootfoot]

You're not actually wrong. The twinned rainbow of youtube video fame are concentric and explained by the different sized droplets. The other type is essentially made from the twin suns of tatooine, one of them being the reflected sun off the water or other highly reflective surface and the other being the regular old, American sun.

Glatt, isn't always right. There was that one time that he thought he was wrong, but it turned out that he was actually right.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by glatt

Yeah. I don't see how a quad rainbow could exist without the rings being concentric.

This is two double rainbows that are offset. Only a rain shower on Tatooine would produce that.

What about two different rain showers displaced geographically but both within the "rainbow range"? don't you have "scattered showers" sometimes?

[Happy Monkey]

I'm pretty sure the center of the rainbow is opposite the sun from the observer. To get two rainbow centers, you need two suns, like Tattooine. Or, as explained, a sun and its reflection off of a large body of water.

Multiple rain showers won't help, only the one that is in the right place relative to the sun and the observer will have a rainbow. If they overlap, you'll see more of it, crossing both showers.

[Sundae]

I saw a sunbow the other day. Do I win?