The Beauty of Light

Botswana, January 2026

Most of us have seen a rainbow, and learned that the colours we see are the result of the refracting (or bending) and dispersing of white light as it passes through large droplets of water, splitting the light into all of the colours of the spectrum...red, orange, yellow, blue, green, indigo and violet (in that order). Rainbows are seen on the opposite side of the sky to the sun.

My brother was recently in Botswana and noticed this exquisite site, and quickly took out his phone to take a photo...so this is really what he saw. I've never seen anything like it before, so he read up about it and this is what we have learned:

This is called "Cloud Iridescence" and is not a true rainbow.

It is caused when the sun is behind or very near to the cloud, and its light passes through very small and uniform droplets (or ice crystals) in thin clouds, like cirrus or altostratus clouds.

These tiny droplets bend the light around their edges, so colours overlap and interfere with each other, instead of separating cleanly. This causes soft and blended patches of colour. The different wavelengths of light partially cancel each other out, also softening the colours

The different droplet sizes and densities "smear" the colours, making them look more like a watercolour painting.

Cloud iridescence is usually really short lived and easy to miss, so Mike was very fortunate to see it, and we are fortunate that he took some beautiful photos quickly with his phone.

What is teaches me too, is how valuable it is to be present to the world around us (especially the natural world)....it is full of surprises and wonder. Truly AWEsome!!

"Life is meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive"

Eleanor Roosevelt