rainbows

Tucked deep inside the Himalayas resides the transcendent and picturesque Zanskar Valley. Photographer Venki Ramachandran captured portions of this epic landscape on a recent journey where witnessed firsthand its enticing vistas.

One of the many fascinating effects of cross-polarization is called “birefringence”, which is responsible for the psychedelic gradients in the seen here.

It's a sad day for the Internet... according to Trend Micro's security analysts, it's been discovered that photographs of both sunsets and -- even more heartbreaking -- cats being shared across the web contain malware capable of getting into your bank accounts.

"Global Rainbow" is an outdoor art installation by Yvette Mattern that consists of seven high powered lasers projecting a bright rainbow across the night sky. The rainbow was originally displayed in New York in 2009, but has since appeared in cities across the UK. If you're lucky enough to see the project in real life, be sure to take some photographs -- it's not every day you get to enjoy rainbows at night.

Seeing a double rainbow is a relatively rare treat, but how about three or four rainbows? Scientists have only reported seeing triple rainbows five times over the past 250 years, but German photographer Michael Theusner was recently able to capture this first ever photograph of a fourth-order rainbow. Ordinary rainbows (first and second order) appear in the area of the sky opposite the sun (and aren't seen in his shot), but when higher order rainbows appear, they show up on the sunward side.

At the Bring to Light nighttime art festival in NYC last weekend, artists Sean McIntyre and Reid Bingham showed off the Rainbow Tracer -- a programmable rotating bar of LEDs that paints giant rainbows into the backgrounds of group portraits.

“Moonbows” are rainbows that appear at night under moonlight, and are difficult to …