...
By Soo Kim
Reporter
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
A video capturing a surreal view from inside a small aircraft flying directly into a rainbow has gone viral on TikTok.
The clip, shared by 26-year-old Nick Brown (@nickbrxwn), has amassed more than 14.9 million views since it was posted on October 9. Text overlaid on the short video reads: "This is what flying directly into a rainbow looks like btw [by the way]."
The footage, taken from the cockpit, shows the plane approaching the vibrant colors of what appears to be a double rainbow. The video gives the illusion that the plane is cutting straight through the colorful arcs. As the plane draws closer, the arcs of color seem to widen and eventually fade, as if the aircraft has flown through them.
Read More on Travel
Brown said the moment, captured on a morning flight over the rural South Florida/Everglades area, was completely unplanned. "I was in a Cessna 172 [type of aircraft] and my friend was flying the plane," he told Newsweek. "Spotted the rainbow not long into the journey, and we were headed that way anyway, so it just worked out perfectly that we flew through it."
While the clip might look like the plane is entering the rainbow itself, that isn’t physically possible because a rainbow is not a tangible object that exists in one location, explains the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
"A rainbow isn’t really a ‘thing’ and it doesn’t exist in a particular ‘place,’" the NOAA says on its website. "It is an optical phenomenon that appears when sunlight and atmospheric conditions are just right—and the viewer’s position is just right to see it."
That means what Brown saw from the cockpit depended entirely on his position relative to the sun and water droplets in the air.
The NOAA describes a rainbow as the result of light refracting, reflecting, and dispersing inside water droplets suspended in the atmosphere. "Light enters a water droplet, slowing down and bending as it goes from air to denser water," the agency says. "The light reflects off the inside of the droplet, separating into its component wavelengths—or colors. When light exits the droplet, it makes a rainbow."
Although rainbows typically appear as an arc when viewed from the ground, the NOAA says that, from an airplane, it is sometimes possible to see a complete circular rainbow. "A full rainbow is actually a complete circle, but from the ground we see only part of it," NOAA explains. "From an airplane, in the right conditions, one can see an entire circular rainbow."
In Brown’s video, viewers can also make out what looks like a secondary rainbow above the primary one—a fainter, reversed arc of colors that forms due to additional reflections of sunlight inside raindrops.
As NOAA notes, "The primary rainbow is caused from one reflection inside the water droplet. The secondary rainbow is caused by a second reflection inside the droplet, and this ‘re-reflected’ light exits the drop at a different angle—50 degrees instead of 42 degrees for the red primary bow. This is why the secondary rainbow appears above the primary rainbow."
...
Do you have a travel-related video or story to share? Let us know via life@newsweek.com and your story could be featured on Newsweek.
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines