Every time we spot a rainbow, we behave like it’s a miracle. It does look like one and we truly believe that the beauty of nature triples with an addition of a rainbow. The natural next step to this: we take out our smart phone, click several pictures until we get the perfect shot and upload it on Instagram with a caption. This is followed by comments like, “Woah! That looks amazing.”
That’s us humans. We marvel at things like kids when they see cake.
We know how rainbows are formed — you know when light is refracted from water droplets suspended in the atmosphere and all that. Now, listen to this story.
Last weekend, on a foggy Sunday night in North Yorkshire, England, Ben Gwynne — a professional photographer — captured something that you would have, perhaps, never seen before.
A moonbow.
Like others, Gwynne was out to capture the supermoon — when the moon appears 30 per cent brighter and 14 per cent bigger to the naked eye — in all its scintillating glory when he chanced upon this amazing visual.
Wondering what a moonbow is? Well, it’s like a rainbow except it’s formed by the sunlight reflecting off the moon’s surface, and refracting off water droplets in the air. Because it was foggy, it meant more moisture and hence, he stumbled upon one. How wonderful is that!
Just to give you a little background, Moonbows are very difficult to spot with naked eyes because moonlight is much weaker than sunlight and hence, they are way fainter than rainbows. They can only be captured in long-exposure photos.
Wondering how you could capture one of your own? Well, if you’re travelling to London either on November 14th or December 14th of this year, you have a shot. Otherwise, all you could do is sit on your laptop and watch people posting Instagram photos with a caption, ” #moonbow #luckyme..”
Yes, that’s life.