Rainbows

Yes­ter­day after­noon it was cold, dark, and rainy up on the Hill. I was the only per­son at the Desert Lab. I hap­pened to glance out my north­ern win­dow and saw the most amaz­ing rain­bow as sun­light broke through a hole in the clouds behind the Hill. It looked like it was just out­side my win­dow. I grabbed a cam­era and ran out­side, know­ing it would be a fleet­ing event. This sight lasted maybe 5 min­utes and was depen­dent on where I stood.

Plato and Aris­to­tle didn’t think so, but maybe one of the ideas that define beauty is imper­ma­nence. The fact that it that would not last caused me to run out after it. Maybe I would have chased it if it was mov­ing. Actu­ally, it would keep mov­ing as I ran.

I got a pic­ture of it, but that will not last for­ever either. And I spent time curs­ing and fid­dling with the set­ting on my new cam­era, which I still don’t com­pletely under­stand how to use. Maybe I’d have done as well to just stand there in awe and expe­ri­ence the sight. The eye cap­tures far more than a lens. I did that for a time. This is one rea­son for spend­ing a lot of time at one place to get to know it. Like most things, you have to be there.

You could see the sub­tle anatomy of a rain­bow: the reversed and fainter outer sec­ondary rain­bow, the darker air between them, the brighter region inside the main arc, the super­nu­mer­ary rain­bows – maybe 3 or 4 faint arcs just under­neath it.

While I’m on rain­bows, this is another sim­i­lar event over Tuc­son I pho­tographed last August. A panorama or sev­eral frames that I stitched together later.

Mon­soon rain­bow over down­town, August, 2012. (click to enlarge)