Rainbows and cell phones

The other Friday I was walking across campus to my car after work. The weather was partially overcast, with light rain beginning to fall. Passing between a couple of tall buildings, something caught my eye...a rainbow!!! This was actually the second rainbow I had seen that week, but I was just as excited to see it...even more so as I came upon a clearing and noticed that the colors stretched across the sky in TWO complete bands. Now I've seen my fair share of double rainbows in my life (thanks to the weather in Minnesota), but this one has to be one of the best I've seen. Not only were the colors brilliant, but I noticed a few extra greens and purples under the primary bow. I later found out on spaceweather.com--see the archives for Oct. 17, 2006--that these are known as supernumeraries.

I'm usually not at home when these things show up, so I never get to take pictures to share with others. However, I had just gotten my new cell phone that week and it has a camera!!! (If I can ever figure out how to send the picture from my phone to my computer, I'll post it here.) Being on a college campus, I was soon joined by many other phone-photographers. One in particular I talked to was extremely happy to notice that the rainbow ended right over Beaver Stadium. (No pot of gold was ever found, but the Nittany Lions did win at home that Saturday.)