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Denali Highway, Alaska
Photograph by Rich Reid
A rainbow stretches over a section of the 670-mile-long (1,100-kilometer-long) Denali Highway in Alaska. Rainbows are a simple, ordered display of visible light reflected off of water droplets in the atmosphere.
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Arctic Rainbow
Photograph by Paul Nicklen
A rainbow is reflected in Arctic icy waters in Canada's Foxe Basin. Data from submarines suggest that Arctic sea ice has thinned by 40 percent in the past 30 years. As more water is exposed, the upper ocean absorbs more sunshine, speeding up the decline.
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Rainbow Car
Photograph by Paul Nicklen
The end of a rainbow spotlights a solitary car traveling down a remote road in North America. Since a rainbow is an optical illusion, it doesn't have an actual endpoint. Instead, a rainbow's position continually shifts depending on the viewer's perspective.
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Rainbow Over Baobab Tree
Photograph by Beverly Joubert
A rainbow graces skies above the Mombo region of Botswana's Okavango Delta, home to the Moremi Game Reserve, elusive leopards, and lurking hyenas. Baobab trees such as this one can provide some relief from the sweltering heat.
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Alaska Highway Rainbow
Photograph by Raymond Gehman
Like a portal to wild spaces, a double rainbow hangs over the Alaska Highway in British Columbia, Canada. While rainbows display a brilliant array of colors, most of the radiation in the universe, from very long wavelengths picked up by radios to ultrashort ones seen by special x-ray and gamma-ray detectors, lies outside the rainbow of visible light.
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Rainbow, Purple Sky
Photograph by Paul Nicklen
A fisheye lens captures arcs of light crowning the Canadian wilderness. Water refracts, or bends, the light, separating it into red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet.
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Australian Rainbow
Photograph by Randy Olson
A double rainbow frames termite mounds in Australia's grasslands. Double arcs happen when light is reflected more than once in an atmospheric water droplet.
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Tanzania Rainbow
Photograph by Carsten Peter
Rainbows frame a peculiar lava formation at Ol Doinyo Lengai, a volcano in Tanzania. Maasai goddess Eng'al, who signals her wrath with eruptions and drought, is said to inhabit the summit.
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Rainbow Over Soybean Field
Photograph by Raymond Gehman
A storm leaves a colorful mark across the Pennsylvania sky. Soybean fields, like the one pictured here, are common in Pennsylvania.
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Tundra Rainbows
Photograph by Joel Sartore
Rainbows brighten Alaska's tundra, parts of which are estimated to hold millions of barrels of oil. The tundra is also home to caribou, an important source of sustenance in regions such as Alaska's North Slope.
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