Rainbow

What is the cause of the rainbow? Fog and clouds are, as you know, made up of tiny water droplets or ice crystals. When sunlight passes through them, it decomposes into its constituent parts. In the foggy night around lights on street poles are clearly visible bright rings. And to see the iridescent glow around his head, quite early in the morning until the dew has evaporated from the grass, get back to the sun and look at your shadow on the grass. French artist Rissande make this a very interesting phenomenon associated with the spectral decomposition of light. He watched it on the mountain Pic du Midi: "From the south, could see a vast panorama of mountains, bathed in bright light, whereas in the north valley of the Po and Tarbes were closed continuous sea of ??clouds of blinding white light. Partly from this sea, like smoke, separated pieces of steam rises slowly, and seemed tayavshie in the sky. By three o'clock, these pieces began to accumulate around the Peak, passing over the observatory terrace and disappearing into the abyss. At that time I painted the mountains and suddenly was struck by the extraordinary brilliance of fog covering the distance from me. Just above my head was formed matte white rainbow, and at the same time in the depths of the abyss seemed brightly colored circles in the center that I saw my own image. This image was surrounded by a halo of pale yellow, followed by circles: red, orange and purple ... I called one of his companions, to admire "brokkenskim ghost." When he arrived, both our figures clearly reflected in the center of the circle, and from the shadows of our heads and arms stretched long and dark beams traveling in a peculiar change our positions. If we, for example, extending his hand, moved his fingers, then each of them was the beam, moving like the wings of the mill. "