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21 October 2007 - Spider Rainbow spins a Googly!
 Capturing a rainbow in the skies is difficult enough, but when Simon Culling contacted CLOUD news telling us he'd seen one on the GROUND we thought he was still blurry eyed along with rest of the Rugby nation! Apparently not, and Simon from Milton Keynes has indeed captured a marvellous natural spectacle - A rainbow on the ground! In fact the ground, or cricket pitch, was covered with a huge network of spider webs, covered in dew.
The rainbow is caused by sunlight interacting with water droplets on the ground. The light is bent (refracted) which disperses the many colours which white light consists of. More common similar examples of rainbows forming in water droplets include lawn sprinklers, fountains and in the spray water of waterfalls. As Simon explains, "Whilst putting the wicket to bed (for the winter) at 10.30 this morning, I chanced upon an unusual phenomena that I have not witnessed before - a rainbow on the surface of the grass. The first photo was taken facing S-SE into the sun and appears to show no more than a grass field covered in dew. However, when I crossed to the other side of the wicket and faced N-NW, with the sun behind me, I was treated to the scene in the second photo. The 'rainbow' was a half circle, and the obsever was always located at the top (peak), even if you moved to another position. It could only be seen if you were facing a bit either side of the above mentioned direction i.e. roughly from NW to NE" "Closer examination of the grass revealed the cause. Thousands and thousands of tiny, thin, dew covered spiders's webs, as shown in the third photo. The webs covered a very large area, probably the entire cricket field. The weather was clear and sunny, with barely a breath of wind". See the amazing Spider Rainbow photos. This story made feature in :- THe Daily Mail Last update : 22-10-2007 20:02
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Spider rainbow
By: Linda Bennett (Guest) on 21-10-2007 23:38