Dale Rogers from Mayfair, Saskatchewan, in Canada, answered our call for interesting aviation photos with a series of photos of a full-circle rainbow.
He writes: “For many years I reasoned that if a person was in an aircraft when there was a rainbow that it should be a full circle. So I wanted to see it with my own eyes and get a photo of it!
“On Sept. 8, 2016, there were scattered showers passing in our area so I took the Trike up and my camera, and there it was! It was still fairly early in the afternoon, so I had to get up quite high in order to see the bottom of the rainbow.
“I am enclosing three photos — the left side, the bottom and the right side. My camera couldn’t get the whole circle in one photo because it is not an expensive camera.
“I was flying my trike, so I had to use one hand to hold the steering bar, and it travels faster so the photos were not good enough to stitch together.
“Hopefully next year I will be able to use my powered parachute to get better pictures of another full circle rainbow!”
If you are on top of a cloud layer (with none above you) and can see the shadow of your aircraft there will be a rainbow around it as well. This is not easy to arrange but I have seen it while fly on airliners.
Good logic, and correct.
A rainbow is indeed circular if you can get high enough and are in the right position. I’ve seen several, the best one was from a 727 halfway between Miami and St. Maartin, full bulls-eye, bright, gorgeous 360 degree circle.
I pointed it out to the passenger next to me (my airplane won’t go to FL330) and his only comment was a non-committal and unenthusiastic “OK”. Oh well, some people are aviators, some aren’t and will never be . . .
Thanks for your comment! Did you manage to get a photo or two of it?