How are 2 rainbows possible?

Question

Yesterday evening, there was a brilliantly shining rainbow, then another arc directly above it, but quite a bit higher up in the sky and not as bright. How does that work? Can you get 3 or more?

(I took a picture in case people thought I was going mad!)

Answer 1

i saw three yesterday! not joking!

Answer 2

i think this i due to a reflection.

Answer 3

Rainbows occur due to the total internal reflection of light. Light enters the raindrop, disperses and refracts, then hits the raindrop (totally internally reflecting) before leaving the raindrop. Each of the colours travel at different speeds and thus different raindrops cause different colours to be seen.

Anyway, what I am getting to is that when two rainbows occur, it is due to some of this light entering the raindrop totally internally reflecting in the raindrop twice. The second raindrop has the colours of it reversed because of this.

Answer 4

maybe there's 2 light source that will make that rainbow

Answer 5

Reflection

Answer 6

There are two possible paths for light to reflect through a raindrop and you can see two rainbows if raindrops are available in both locations relative to your angle with respect to the sun.  Each person sees their own personal rainbow because it depends upon the angle between a person, the raindrops and the sun which changes for every different location on the ground..

Answer 7

Secondary rainbows are caused by a double reflection of sunlight inside the raindrops, and appear at an angle of 50°–53°. As a result of the second reflection, the colours of a secondary rainbow are inverted compared to the primary bow, with blue on the outside and red on the inside.

A third, or tertiary, rainbow can be seen on rare occasions, and a few observers have reported seeing quadruple rainbows in which a dim outermost arc had a rippling and pulsating appearance. These rainbows would appear on the same side of the sky as the Sun, making them hard to spot. One type of tertiary rainbow carries with it the appearance of a secondary rainbow immediately outside the primary bow. The closely spaced outer bow has been observed to form dynamically at the same time that the outermost (tertiary) rainbow disappears. During this change, the two remaining rainbows have been observed to merge into a band of white light with a blue inner and red outer band. This particular form of doubled rainbow is not like the classic double rainbow due to both spacing of the two bows and that the two bows share identical normal colour positioning before merging. With both bows, the inner colour is blue and the outer colour is red.

Answer 8

yes well it was the wicked witch of the west..who conjured 2 rainbows..you really should stay on the yellow brick road ....