APOD: 2026 October 4 – Supernumerary Rainbows over New Jersey

Automatically curated summary from NASA.

According to NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day, photographer John Entwistle captured a rare display of supernumerary rainbows over the Jersey Shore following Hurricane Florence in 2018. The featured image shows at least five distinct rainbow bands fading in and out. As explained by astronomers, supernumerary rainbows form when sunlight undergoes wave interference inside uniform falling water droplets smaller than one millimeter. Historically, the observation of these interference patterns in the early 1800s provided crucial early evidence demonstrating the wave nature of light.

Context and limitations

The text is a brief educational caption from a daily photo feature based on a single photographer's image from 2018, rather than a full peer-reviewed scientific paper.