Why that 'plane flying directly above a rainbow' photo isn't quite what it seems

The internet got rather excited this week when a ‘lucky’ plane passenger claimed she’d captured her jet flying directly over a rainbow.

Melissa Rensen snapped the kaleidoscope of colour while travelling over the Carribean Sea.

Melissa, 51, said she didn’t spot the apparently once-in-a-lifetime moment until she looked at her pictures later on.

She said she looked back at her shots and noticed the blanket of colour covering the cloudy expanse beneath the jet’s wings.

Melissa, from London, Ontario, Canada, said: 'When I saw the rainbow in the shot I was stunned - I'd never experienced anything like it and I doubt I ever will again.

'At first I thought maybe it was caused by jet fuel vapour, but then another photographer friend of mine pointed out that the rainbow was beneath the clouds.

'All my uncertainty faded and I knew I'd captured something special.'

Several media outlets excitedly presented the photos as the plane definitely flying over a rainbow - but sadly the real effect behind the image isn’t so special.

Flying directly through or over a rainbow isn’t actually possible - they’re an optical trick caused by light reflected and refracted in water droplets.

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Rainbows aren’t a physical object which have a defined place in the sky. Your perspective of them changes depending on where you’re stood.

The dazzling multicolor light effect in Ms Rensen’s pictures was more likely caused by polarisation of the airplane’s window.

Light from the sky illuminates the landscape before traveling through the window. It’s at this point that it is partially polarised.

The windows of airplanes have at least one layer of thick plastic. When they are made, the plastic is rendered slightly anistropic, meaning its properties change in different directions.