Rainbow Gallery - WIP

Photo captured in Flordia by Reddit user Firetruckyou098. Typical primary and secondary rainbows are observed, with a hint of supernumerary bands under the primary. A third rainbow appears over the secondary, likely a reflection rainbow created by sunlight reflecting off of relatively flat water behind the viewer, and into raindrops at a different angle than light directly from the sun. This is supported by the rainbows width, diameter, and color order similar to that of the primary, faintness due to being reflected light, and high height in the sky compared to the low primary rainbow (both indicate the sun is relatively high in the sky, if the sun were low, much more of the primary would be visible, and the reflection rainbow would be closer to it).

Photo capturing 3/4 of a rainbow from Mt. Zschirnstein in Germany by Alexander Haussmann. Since the viewer is higher than the horizon, less ground gets in the way of seeing the full rainbow. Notice how the shadow of the mountain is in the center of the rainbow; this makes sense considering a rainbow's center (antisolar point) is directly opposite of the sun.

A full circle rainbow caputured by Ari Rex, who photographed it from the top of the Telstra tower in Australia. The sky is dark, indicating the sun is setting, which is consistent with the rainbow being almost perfectly centered over the horizon, as the sun must be near the horizon for the antisolar point to be near the horizon, assuming the viewer is near ground level. The viewer here is in a tower ontop a mountain however, indicating the sun is not quite at the horizon.

A full rainbow obscured by a plane wing, taken by Debra and Peter Ceravolo. This full rainbow even features supernumerary bands!

Another full circle rainbow, this one by Colin Leonhardt of Birdseye View Photography.

Another full rainbow with secondary by Leonhardt.

Full cirlce rainbow and secondary by Anne Kim. Over water reflecting the sky, the rainbow almost appears to be completely over sky, but there indeed is a horizon

Here is a quadruple rainbow. It features a primary rainbow, a reflection primary, a secondary, and a reflected secondary. The oddly tilted ones are the reflection rainbows, which are created by light reflecting off of the water into the raindrops, at a different angle than the light directly from the sun. I only have an imgur source for this one

This image is falsly attributed to pilot Lloyd J. Ferraro, but while he has seen circular rainbows while in flight, he did not take this "photo." This image is artistic, but the blurriness combined with the cloudlike quality of the rainbow indicates that this is an AI generated image.

The first warning sign here is that the rainbow is not circular. A rainbows position is dependant on the observer, it will always be circular and cannot be viewed from the side like this oval shape implies. Not to mention its path is missing in the cloud gap at the bottom. Related to perspective is the fact that there is no horizon visible, which is improbable considering how wide rainbows are and the relationship between the sun and viewer.

Next warning sign is the narrow firey orange quality the rainbow has at the bottom, mimicking how the sun can have a firey effect on clouds. The sunset sky colors indicate the rainbow is on the same side of the sun, but this is not the case for real primary rainbows, which directly oppose the sun.

It is also not brighter inside the rainbow, as it should be, because raindrops direct light inwards.

First warning sign: all three rainbows are relatively close in intensity, width, and spacing. None of the rainbows look like a secondary rainbow, reflection rainbow, or split rainbow. Looking closer at the trees in the bottom, we can see repetition in tree pattern and ghost traces of leaves, indicating a cloning tool was used. We also see that while first rainbow appears behind the trees, the other two do not.

The amount of differing shapes/angles of the rainbows is an instant red flag. The far right rainbow arc is the worst; its so absurdly distorted in shape compared to any legitimate rainbow that would form a close to perfect circle.

This photo appears to be the uneditted version; the earliest source I could find was from imgur. Here we see a bright primary rainbow, a soft secondary rainbow, and a reflection rainbow between the two. If we look back at the photoshopped image, we can see that almost all the fake rainbows appear to be edits of the primary rainbow, featuring the same colors and fading near the top.

This photo appears to have come from around the same location, just a little further away. The photographer mentions that many other people stopped to take pictures of the rainbows he saw, make it possible the two pictures were taken around the same time. The imgur photo was posted August 2014, and this photo is marked with 2015, but the photographer's post was made in January and he mentions it being summer when this occured; leaving it still possible that these two pictures were taken at the same time and location.