Fig. 1 Simulation of the primary rainbow (for unpolarised light) for a water drop of radius r = 200 µm. using the specified number n of wavelengths spaced evenly between 0.38 µm and 0.7 µm.
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The continuous spectrum of sunlight can be approximated by using n discrete wavelengths spaced evenly between 0.38 µm and 0.7 µm. Normal colorimetric practice uses a relatively small number of wavelengths (e.g. n = 7 or n = 30) but Mie calculations can give misleading results when only a few wavelengths are used. It must be emphasised that this problem is not caused by the spectral characteristics of the incident light: indeed, such problems occur even if a flat spectrum is used.
The fundamental cause is that the fine ripple structure visible in graphs of Mie scattering of monochromatic light is very dependent on wavelength. As calculations for multiple wavelengths involve the addition of intensity curves for different wavelengths, the ripple structure will be reinforced if the maxima and minima for different wavelengths coincide: for example, the maxima and minima of the ripple structure shown here for 650 nm coincide approximately with those for 650.9 nm, 651.8 nm and so on.
The following diagrams explore the effect of n on simulations of rainbows, glories and coronas.
Fig. 1 indicates that simulations of the primary rainbow for r = 200 µm are almost identical when calculated using more than 15 wavelengths, apart from minor changes in brightness. Hence, there is little value in using more than 30 wavelengths for this condition.
For r = 100 µm, Fig. 2 shows minor variations in the appearance of the primary rainbow (137° - 150°) for 10 or more wavelengths, but the secondary rainbow (120° - 129°) shows significant ripples when less than 100 wavelengths are used. The secondary rainbow is shown in much greater detail in Fig. 3, indicating that perhaps 300 wavelengths are needed for consistent simulations of the secondary rainbow.
Fig. 4 indicates that scattering from droplets of radius r = 10 µm result in a glory consistingof a bright red circle centred on the anti-solar point with a radius of ~2.1° (scattering angle of 177.9°) and a weaker red circle with a radius of ~3.7° (176.3°).
The variations between the horizontal stripes of Fig. 4 show that MiePlot simulations of the glory are very sensitive to the number of wavelengths used in the calculations. Whereas the simulations of the primary and secondary rainbows in Figs. 1 - 3 are fairly consistent with 30 or more wavelengths, it is obvious from Fig. 4 that many more wavelengths (more than 500) are required to achieve an accurate simulation of the glory.
Fig. 5 indicates that, unlike the glory and the rainbow, consistent simulations of the corona can be produced using only a small number of wavelengths.
Updated on 22 July 2002
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