Double Pink Rainbow Across The Sky; Setting Sun Creates Rosy Rainbows [PHOTOS]

Photo: Jacques Joubert/EPOD The setting sun colors a rainbow in with blushing pink hues.

That’s what New Zealand photographer Jacques Joubert captured while photographing a sunset in South Africa last October. The pink tones of the rainbow come courtesy of the sun’s low position near the horizon, which makes the sunlight travel a longer path and scatters the green and blue wavelengths, leaving behind a rosy tinge.

Joubert’s photo was featured by NASA’s Earth Science division as the Earth Science Picture of the Day on Monday. His isn’t the first pastel rainbow to win the crown of EPOD, either; last September, NASA featured a snapshot of a pink rainbow seen over Australia’s Corio Bay in July 2011:

Photo: Phil Thomson/EPOD An Australian sunset generates this pink rainbow.

Another blushing rainbow can be seen in an EPOD from November 2005, which captured a pink streak arcing above Quebec.

Photo: Paul Charbonneau, Soleil du Jour/EPOD A rosy rainbow captured in the sky above Canada in 2005.