Images online claim to show photographs taken from planes while flying over rainbows.
Some examples can be seen below –
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While the images are certainly stunning, and most of them are probably real (as opposed to ‘photoshopped’,) the claim that they depict someone flying over a rainbow in a plane are false, despite what many misleading tabloid headlines may claim. And that is because you cannot fly over (or through) a rainbow from your own perspective, since that is physically impossible.
Rainbows are formed when light is refracted from water droplets in the air when they are at a certain angle relative to the sun and the person observing the rainbow. This means that rainbows exist only from the perspective of someone observing the rainbow.
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Two people standing next to each other will probably both be able to see a rainbow in the same position, but since those two people are still standing in different positions, the angles between them and the water droplets in the air are slightly different, meaning the two people are seeing slightly different rainbows. If someone moves far away enough, the angles change significantly, and they may very well not see a rainbow anymore because the angles have changed so much and are no longer capable of producing the illusion.
This means that a rainbow isn’t actually “there”. It’s quite literally a trick of the light that is only visible to those seeing it from a specific perspective. So while someone on the ground may see a plane fly through a rainbow, the people on board the plane are seeing the same space from an entirely different perspective, and will not see it.
As such, you cannot fly directly over a rainbow from your own perspective, because the angles required between the sun, water droplets in the air and the observer to form the rainbow illusion directly below you cannot be achieved. This is also where the adage of never being able to reach the end of a rainbow comes from, because you can’t.
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That isn’t to say the plethora of photos showing brightly colored bands from the window of a plane aren’t real, since many of them probably are. They’re just not rainbows.
These photos actually show a phenomenon called polarisation. A number of factors can polarise sunlight, including the ocean surface and the material used to make plane windows. These factors can, in certain circumstances, conspire to create colored bands that are more visible through the lens of a camera, which is why many who take such photos claim not to have seen the illusion in real life, only on the photograph.
The polarising effect isn’t a rainbow, and as such the photos above don’t show someone flying “over a rainbow”. Rainbows and the pictured examples of polarisation above are entirely different phenomena.