Nature / Fish farm worker witnesses rare rainbow reflection
A FISH farm worker was lucky enough to take a series of photographs of a rare natural phenomenon when working near Linga off the west of Shetland last week.
He and his colleagues were stunned when following a heavy rain shower last Wednesday, they saw not a single, not a double, but what appeared to be a triple rainbow.
Stuart McLeod said: “I was at work and looked at the rainbow and said to the other guys that I’ve never seen a rainbow like that before.
“Then everyone had a look and started taking pictures.
“One guy looked it up and saw that it was very rare to see. The pictures don’t do it justice at all. It only lasted for 20 minutes.”
He added: “We were all working hard setting up a fish farm site at the time but took time to appreciate the beauty of this natural phenomenon.”
Double rainbows appear when the sun rays are reflected twice inside water droplets. The intensity of the second bow is weaker, and the order of the colours are reversed.
Occasionally, there can be an additional reflection, or “supernumerary bow”.
However, the reflective third bow seen over Linga is not a true triple or ‘tertiary’ rainbow, which have been witnessed but are ultra-rare, and can only be seen when looking into the sun rather than away from it.
According to an article by the Institute of Science and Technology Austria in 2022, the first photographic evidence of such a tertiary rainbow was only published in 2011.
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