We've all seen at least one rainbow. Sometimes you can see two at once. But three? “I've never seen anything like it,” says Rune Askeland, who captured a triple rainbow over Glesvaer, Norway on August 26.
“The bird sculptures at the foot of the rainbow were created by artist Kire Grepp,” explains Askeland. "They are carved from one large iron plate and symbolize the mother bird and her children."
To understand the nature of a reflection rainbow, let's first remember what an ordinary rainbow is: sunlight passes through falling raindrops, which act like tiny prisms, refracting the sun's rays and breaking them down into composite colors. The two concentric arcs in Askeland's image are ordinary rainbows, and the third between them is reflected.
Reflected rainbows are formed in a similar way with one difference: the light source is not the sun, but the reflection of the sun from the nearest body of water. According to the photographer, there really are bodies of water nearby - the North Sea and several fjords.