Martinique Rainbow

Provided and copyright by: William Chamberland
Summary authors & editors:  Jim Foster, William Chamberland 

As we cruised north off the west coast of the island of Martinique this past November, we chanced upon this low-slung rainbow that lasted for perhaps 30 minutes. Rainbows can only be observed if the Sun is less than about 43 degrees above the horizon, and the higher the Sun is in the sky the lower the rainbow will appear. Photo was taken at 2:45 p.m. local time, on November 25, 2007.

Though this scene gives a flavor of the tropical tranquility of the Caribbean, four days after I took this photo, a 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck Martinique. The image is a composite of four separate pictures taken with an Olympus D450 camera.