Chasing the Rainbow

Last night when I looked out of my living room window, around 19:40, the sky to the south-west had strange colour - and when I stepped out on the balcony for a closer look, to the east I could also see part of an impressive rainbow (and even a double one).

The first photo taken with my phone, 
the second one with my Sony camera shortly after.

As I could only see part of the rainbow from my balcony, I decided to go outside to check if I could see more. 

Alas I found that the high fence around the old football field (about to turned into a park and just now partly dug up)  didn't make it easy to take photos from the ground either...

But by walking a bit further to the left, and finding a wider hole in the fence, I managed to get a wider view - but still couldn't fit the whole rainbow into the same photo. 

But at the cloud-free other end of the wide bow, the sky was blue!

Back up on my balcony a while later, looking west rather than east, with the evening sun hitting the clouds in the sky, it was a strange (and even somewhat ominous) shade of glowing pinkish orange:

 Linking to Skywatch Friday 

Rainbows and Water Lilies

 

"It took me time to understand my water lilies. I had planted them for the pleasure of it; I grew them without ever thinking of painting them." / Claude Monet

“Where does the rainbow end, in your soul or on the horizon?” / Pablo Neruda

 

A Rainbow for Skywatch Friday

After a rain shower earlier in the week, I managed to zoom in on this magnificent rainbow from my kitchen window.

Skywatch Friday: Rainbow

Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life.
The evening beam that smiles the clouds away,
and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.

Lord Byron (1788-1824)

in Bride of Abydos (1814) Canto II, St. 20

(according to Wikiquote.org)

Friday My Town: Touch the Sky

Until just the other day, I always thought of the end of the rainbow as always out of reach, and something that you’d never actually get to see, because it would always seem to be going down behind some trees, or disappearing into the open sea… Now, however, I have learned that the rainbow can actually bend like a waterfall over trees and come down on the solid road right in front of you!

So we actually drove right through the rainbow on our way back from the coast on Monday (I’ll write more about that trip in another post). And yet, even after we had driven through, there it still was on the sky in front of us… (Or was it another one?? Looking closely at the photo above, you can actually see two.)

Sharing with:

Friday My Town Shoot Out: Touch the Sky

Skywatch Friday

Rainbows

(Photo from July 2012)

This weekend (for the first time) my town is having a Pride festival. I’ve not really been “attending” any of the events, but even just passing through the city one can’t help noticing…

And it set me pondering about how symbols sometimes come to change their meaning over time.

In a little box of odds and ends at the back of a drawer, I still have this vintage “Christian hippie” button from the early 1970’s. I’m not sure if I ever wore it, but it used to sit on a notice board in my home amongst a variety of photos and postcards and whatnots:

Back in the early/mid 1970’s, buttons with various kinds of statements and messages were very common. If not about religion, it might be For Peace, or Against Nuclear Power, or whatever. (Remember – there was no Facebook back then. So I guess we just had to use ourselves as billboards!)

However (I just checked) it was not until 1978 that the rainbow flag was first used by the gay movement. So this old button of mine had nothing to do with that, but was meant (or at least so I interpreted it!) to remind of the Biblical covenant between God and Noah in the Book of Genesis:

And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth. (Gen 9:16, KJV)

In other religions and mythologies too, the rainbow has often been seen as a bridge between heaven and earth; but also as representing elusive mysteries and dreams. (If you have ever tried to chase a rainbow in order to get a better photo of it, you will understand why!)

(And no, I would not wear that button now. For one thing, there might be no end to the variety of interpretations it could provoke!)

…

Sharing with Friday My Town – Celebrations

Rainbow

So at which end of the rainbow is the pot of gold supposed to be?

“In a double rainbow, a second arc is seen outside the primary arc, and has the order of its colours reversed, red facing toward the other one, in both rainbows. This second rainbow is caused by light reflecting twice inside water droplets.”

There was a full rainbow over the football field last night… But, unfortunately, before I had managed to remember how to do a panorama view, half of the bow had vanished.

Remains to be seen whether I’ll get another chance to se a full rainbow this summer.  I have seen it in the same place before. But catching it is another thing… I can’t get the full view from my windows and before I get out there, more often than not it’s already gone.

Linking to Skywatch Friday