2026-10-20
NASA Science
Today's window into deep space: NASA Science. The story behind the image:
Why this matters
What you're looking at ties directly to the night sky. Every frame the world's observatories capture adds another data point to humanity's slowly-assembling map of everything beyond our planet.
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The science, from NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day
This is an unusual rainbow. For one thing, the rainbow is not complete, appearing only in a sunlit fan -- but that by itself is not very unusual. What is most unusual is the fake location of the Sun. The Sun appears to be toward the front, just below those hills -- but it is not. That is not how rainbows work. Rainbows involve a backward reflection from falling rain, so that the Sun must really be behind you. In this case, gaps between clouds near the setting Sun allowed rays to cross the entire sky and appear to converge in front, an unusual phenomenon called anticrepuscular rays. The photo was taken with a phone last week at sunset in Presenzano, Italy. The seemingly reverse rainbow was noticed when hanging up laundry.Tomorrow's picture: open space
Source: NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day (public domain)