A woman walking her dog has described the "magical moment" she witnessed while at her local park this week, saying it was "wild" to have seen "the end of a rainbow" right before her eyes. Jazz Thornton, an author and activist from , told Yahoo News Australia it took her a moment to realise what she was seeing while standing in the rain at Auckland park this week. But she was sad to learn "there was no gold" as the folktale goes.
"I have only ever seen rainbows go behind things, so to see the end was insane," she said. "As we got closer it didn't move either, usually they go further away". The 29-year-old shared an incredible photo with Yahoo showing appears to meet the grass as the It's often theorised the end of a rainbow will never be seen as it doesn't exist because the rainbow itself is just an illusion.
But here "the end is quite clear and in front of the ground," quantum physics professor Andrew Greentree told Yahoo. "Rainbows are, in fact, always circular, it’s just that we usually don’t see the bottom side of the rainbow. Because of that there’s always an ‘end’ to the rainbow somewhere".
"Rainbows are formed by light bouncing off droplets of water in the air. At the same time the light is reflecting, it is also being bent – like millions of tiny glasses," Greentree explained. "The incredible thing about the water is that each colour of light gets bent differently from each other, and so the reflected light is separated into colours.
This video shows a very clear rainbow, as well as a second rainbow (double rainbow), and dark band between the bows." He explained the bending of light is usually pretty small, which is why we usually only see rainbows when the water is a long way away. "But there are always rainbows provided the sun, viewer, and water are at the right positions," he said.
"Here, the water that the rainbow is reflected from is quite close – closer than the trees and the background. This is why the bow is relatively small." Thornton captured the amazing moment on camera before sharing it on .
The incredible sight shocked many who called it "cool" and " beautiful" with several admitting they'd never seen the end either. "Never in my 50 years of life have I ever seen the end of a rainbow. That's so cool," one commented on the video.
"Beautiful I've never seen the end of the rainbow," said another. "Never in my 31 years have I seen one," a third added. "Thank you for this.
Can tick it off my bucket list" Even Greentree was amazed by the unique discovery, calling it a "beautiful rainbow". "There may not be a pot of gold at the end of this [video], but there certainly is a beauty that will last longer"..
