Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 January 1898 — A Rainbow in the Moonlight. [ARTICLE]

A Rainbow in the Moonlight.

The great lunar rainbow seen from the houses on the cliffs at Nahant and along Marginal road on the night of a recent great storm was, on the wordx>f an astronomer, a most unusual, as it was a most splendid and Impressive, sight. Halo rainbows about Lady Lunar or bits of rainbow on “the little clouds sailing around the moon” are not uncommon, but a full bow spanning the heavens is not often seen by night. It needs a full and brilliant moon and a small shower. The one which hung in the heavens above Swampscott and Beach Bluff showed with peculiar radiance across the waiter to the people at Nahant whose backs were to the big bright moon that came out of her flying storm clouds long enough to show a quarter hour of the phenomenon. The red and blue in the great bow were fairly pronounced, the orange was fainter and it required help from the imagination to distinguish any of the other four prismatic colors before the rainbow began to fade. Then the most distant right end of it glowed with increasing yet “ineffectual tires." 'lf a “rainbow at night is the sailor’s delight,” ’lts surely the solar bow which is so often seen before sunset. The astronomer who has never seen but one full archihg moonbow in his observant career notes that the chances are few indeed for mortals to observe this glory of the Lady Luna. In the first place, there must be a full moon, and there are only about thirtysix chances in a year, a tenth of the chances to tee a solar rainbow, and these may be quartered by the fact that most people are not up all night, as they are all day. If there were quite as many moonbows as sunbows proportionately—and this Is improbable—we have only one-fortieth ns much opportunity to observe them.—Boston Evening Transcript