Things You Never Knew About Black: Black Rainbows

Black rainbows or Moonbows coincide with a full moon and are the result of light refracting through water droplets in the atmosphere. 

Moonbows are relatively faint, due to the smaller amount of light reflected from the surface of the moon. They are always in the opposite part of the sky from the moon. Because the light is usually too faint to excite the cone color receptors in human eyes, it is difficult for the human eye to discern colors in a moonbow. 

For true moonbows the moon must be low in the sky (less than 42 degrees and preferably lower) and the sky must be very dark. Since the sky is still light on a rising full moon, this means they can only be observed 2 to 3 hours before sunrise, a time with few observers. And, of course, there must be rain falling opposite the moon. This combination of requirements makes moonbows much rarer than rainbows produced by the sun. Moonbows may also be visible when rain falls during full moon rise at extreme latitudes during the winter months, when the prevalence of the hours of darkness give more opportunity for the phenomenon to be observed.

Black Friday Crow Giveaway
I'm giving away one of my black (Friday) crow prints. This is a reproduction print of an original pen-and-ink drawing. The image area for framing is 5 1/4" x 5 5/16" and is printed on an 8 1/2" x 11" sheet of acid free, warm off-white paper. This is also the crow that is being used as set decoration on Charlie Sheen's TV show, Anger Management.


To Enter: Simply email me your name to: inkartist@knology.net. Please put Black Friday Crow in the subject line. I must receive your email by midnight this Friday, November 29th to be eligible. You must be 18 in order to enter.

Notification: The winner will be picked at random and will receive an email Monday morning and I will post the winner on my blog and social media sites.

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