Plane passenger captures spectacular images of 'rainbow' from window
A plane passenger has captured the spectacular moment she appeared to fly directly over a rainbow.
Melissa Rensen, 51, snapped the kaleidoscope of colour while travelling over the Caribbean Sea.
But Melissa, from London in Ontario, Canada didn't even realise until she looked at the images later on.
She was travelling from North America to Honduras and spotted an interesting cloud formation below.
And after looking back at the shot she noticed the blanket of colour covering the expanse below.
Melissa, who runs her own cleaning service, told Caters News: "I was passing time on our long flight and looked out the window to see hundreds of these little cotton-like clouds.
"I noticed how shadows were cast on the Caribbean Sea and thought it was such a beautiful scene I had to snap some shots.
"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.
"Having not seen the rainbow with my naked eye, it wasn't until I reviewed the images later that I saw this brightly coloured rainbow.
"At first I thought maybe it was caused by jet fuel vapour or perhaps from the polarised window on the plane, 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."
As the Daily Mail points out, flying through or above a rainbow isn't actually possible as the phenomenon is caused by light reflected and refracted in water droplets in a section of sky directly opposite the sun.
The paper adds: "Because they are formed by droplets above the ground, centred on a line from the sun to the viewer's eye, they are only visible from a distance.
"This means it is not possible to 'fly through' a rainbow."
A photography expert from Portsmouth University told MailOnline that Ms Rensen's images were not actually a rainbow, but were caused by the polarisation of the airplane's window.
But the effects in these images are still stunning.
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