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A rainbow is a multicolored arc, or curved line, in the sky. Most rainbows form when the Sun’s rays strike raindrops falling from faraway rain clouds. Rainbows appear in the part of the sky opposite the Sun, usually in the early morning or late afternoon. From inside to outside, the colors of a rainbow are violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red.

Sunlight travels through space in the form of waves. Scientists use an idea called wavelength to describe these waves. Some light waves have long wavelengths, while others have short wavelengths. Light waves with different wavelengths appear as different colors. Usually all light waves blend together to form white light. But when light waves pass through raindrops, they separate. This happens because the raindrops bend light waves with different wavelengths by a different amount. The separated light waves appear as the colors of a rainbow.

The brightest and most common type of rainbow is called a primary bow. Sometimes a fainter rainbow forms outside the primary bow. This is called a secondary bow or, sometimes, a double rainbow. A secondary bow forms when the light bends twice inside the water drops. The first bend makes the primary bow, and the second bend makes the secondary bow. The colors in the secondary bow appear in the opposite order of the colors in the primary bow.

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